Ex-OpenAI heads start up Thinking Machines Lab to tackle “gaps” in AI

OpenAI’s ex-CTO, Mira Murati, announced Thinking Machines Lab on X (formerly Twitter), with plans to take on major players in the space like her former employer. Also joining her from OpenAI are co-founder John Schulman and Barret Zoph, its ex-chief research officer.

Schulman will take on the chief scientist role, while Zoph will act as CTO. The idea behind the company is to build a future “where everyone has access to knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.”

Today, we are excited to announce Thinking Machines Lab (https://t.co/gD5QlPMfWw), an artificial intelligence research and product company. We are scientists, engineers, and builders behind some of the most widely used AI products and libraries, including ChatGPT,…

— Thinking Machines (@thinkymachines) February 18, 2025

Part of this is to “bridge the gaps”, by allowing future projects to be tuned to “specific needs and values.” Thinking Machines doesn’t elaborate on how this would differ from OpenAI’s – and other competitors’ – obsession with producing “agents”, which would do exactly this.

However, it does explain that it wants to place AI into “every field of work.” It’s not known if the company will move into generative AI space, similar to OpenAI and Google, with image generators and the like. This technology has been criticized heavily by those in creative industries as an attempt to cut them out of a job.

On its website and X announcement, it details that the team is working with those who have “created some of the most widely used AI products”. This includes ChatGPT, but among them are other more focused projects. People from Character.ai, a chat app where you can talk to characters, and developers from “open-weight models” like Mistral.

In the announcement, Thinking Machines claims that knowledge for AI training is often kept behind locked doors at “top research labs”. It goes on to explain that their belief is that this limits “public discourse” around AI, as well as “people’s abilities to use AI effectively.”

I started Thinking Machines Lab alongside a remarkable team of scientists, engineers, and builders. We're building three things:
– Helping people adapt AI systems to work for their specific needs
– Developing strong foundations to build more capable AI systems
– Fostering a…

— Mira Murati (@miramurati) February 18, 2025

On X, Murati said that the company is building “three things”. These are:

• The aforementioned building AI systems to “work for their specific needs”
• Putting together “foundations” to ensure better AI systems in the future
• Open science culture to help the field “understand and improve these systems”

There’s no further explanation as to what these will entail, as with the announcements.

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