Ex-Openai Researchers Join Mira Murati’s New AI Startup

markediumApril 15, 20251 Mins read874

Ex-Openai Researchers Join Mira Murati's New AI Startup

Thinking Machines Lab, the newly launched AI venture spearheaded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has added two influential figures from the AI world to its roster. Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a pivotal contributor to the GPT technology, have taken on advisory roles at the startup, according to information published on the company’s official website.

McGrew, who held leadership roles at OpenAI over a seven-year period before stepping down in September 2024, played a central part in guiding its research direction. Radford, a core architect behind OpenAI’s groundbreaking GPT models, as well as the Whisper speech-to-text system and DALL·E image generator, departed from the organization last year after close to a decade of work.

Their involvement with Thinking Machines Lab became public in March when their names appeared on the company’s website, as first reported by TechCrunch. The venture, under Murati’s leadership as CEO, is focused on creating AI systems that offer greater transparency and can be tailored more easily to individual user needs. The team includes a growing number of top researchers, with backgrounds from elite institutions like OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Murati stepped away from OpenAI in October 2023 following a six-year tenure, during which she oversaw the development of several flagship products including ChatGPT. Her current team features John Schulman, OpenAI co-founder, who serves as chief scientist, and Barret Zoph, formerly in charge of model training at OpenAI, now functioning as CTO.

Back in February, the company shared its intention to develop AI tools aimed at allowing users to better personalise artificial intelligence for their unique use cases. TechCrunch also reported that the startup is in the process of securing over $100 million in funding.

As of now, neither McGrew nor Radford have made any public statements regarding their new roles with the company.

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