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OpenAI's new CEO is a 34-year-old originally from Albania who is already a force in artificial intelligence.
Mira Murati had been OpenAI's chief technology officer until the board appointed her interim CEO on Friday afternoon after it sent shockwaves through the tech world when it announced that Sam Altman would be departing from his roles as CEO and board member.
Educated in Canada, Murati is a mechanical engineer by training who built a hybrid racecar as an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College. She joined OpenAI in 2018 after stints at Tesla, where she played a key role in the development of the Model X car, and Leap Motion, a start-up that developed a computing system to track hand and finger motions, The New York Times reports.
A search process for Altman's permanent successor is now underway, but in the meantime, Murati is a good fit, the board said in a statement.
"A member of OpenAI's leadership team for five years, Mira has played a critical role in OpenAI's evolution into a global AI leader. She brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company's values, operations, and business, and already leads the company's research, product, and safety functions," OpenAI said in a post announcing Altman's departure."
"Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO."
When Murati joined OpenAI as a researcher in 2018, the company had just 40 to 50 employees, she told Fortune. She quickly worked her way up the company's ranks, becoming its chief technology officer in 2022, and now oversees the teams behind the buzzy chatbot ChatGPT and the image generator Dall-E 2.