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Mira Murati: Walking Away from an $80 Billion Dollar AI Giant to Pursue Impact
This Albanian-born engineer helped launch ChatGPT. Then she walked away from one of the most powerful companies in tech. Learn why.
Jenny Stojkovic
April 09, 2025
In 2024, Mira Murati made a decision that stunned the tech world. After helping to build OpenAI into one of the most influential companies on the planet, she stepped away from her role as Chief Technology Officer to start over. Her reason was clear. She believed the future of artificial intelligence needed more than profit motives and product launches. It needed ethics, accountability, and public trust.
Her journey to that moment started decades earlier, in a part of the world rarely associated with global technology leadership.
From Albania to Dartmouth
Mira Murati was born in 1988 in Vlorë, a coastal city in Albania. She grew up in a country still feeling the effects of its communist past. Resources were limited, but her curiosity was not. From a young age, she showed an aptitude for mathematics and science. Her parents encouraged her ambition, and she set her sights far beyond her hometown.