Mira Murati is an Albanian-American engineer and technology executive who served as Chief Technology Officer of [[OpenAI]] from 2018 to 2024. In that role, she oversaw the development and deployment of several of the company's most consequential products, including ChatGPT and DALL-E, which brought [[Generative AI]] into mainstream public awareness. Before joining OpenAI, Murati worked at Tesla on the Model X program and at Leap Motion, a gesture-tracking technology company, building a background that spanned aerospace engineering and consumer hardware.
Murati became a prominent public figure during OpenAI's board crisis in November 2023, when the board of directors abruptly fired CEO [[Sam Altman]]. She was named interim CEO during the upheaval, serving in that capacity for several days before Altman was reinstated following intense pressure from employees and investors. The episode drew international attention to questions of AI governance, corporate structure, and the tension between OpenAI's nonprofit mission and its commercial ambitions.
In September 2024, Murati departed OpenAI, announcing her decision in an internal memo. Her exit was part of a broader wave of senior leadership departures from the company during that period. Murati's tenure at OpenAI coincided with the period in which generative AI moved from a research curiosity to a major force in the technology industry, and she was widely regarded as one of the key technical leaders who shaped that transition.