**Former OpenAI Exec Starts New AI Lab, Promptly Declares War on Former Colleagues**
Mira Murati, formerly OpenAI’s CTO and now full-time corporate exile, has unveiled her new artificial intelligence venture with the kind of dramatic flair usually reserved for Silicon Valley betrayals. Her company, “Thinking Machines Lab,” is apparently determined to make AI more open, customizable, and, if we’re reading this right, less controlled by her former employer.
Murati, clearly embracing her villain origin story, has assembled what can only be described as a rogue’s gallery of AI research talent. Among them are ex-OpenAI scientist John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and experts from DeepMind, Character AI, and Mistral. We assume the hiring bonus included binoculars for peering menacingly across San Francisco Bay at OpenAI headquarters.
“We just felt that AI needs to be more open and understood by the public,” Murati said in a statement that definitely does not contain any buried resentment. “Also, we’re looking forward to making sure OpenAI loses sleep every single night knowing we exist.”
The new lab will focus on human-AI collaboration, something that will surely be comforting to the millions of humans currently trying to stop AI from replacing them entirely. It also promises to embrace open science, a radical concept in an industry that prefers to make major advancements in secrecy before springing them on the world like a nefarious Bond villain.
Some industry analysts believe this shake-up signals a broader trend—one in which every former OpenAI executive will inevitably leave to start a new company dedicated to directly undermining their former employer. It’s becoming a rite of passage, like overpriced lattes and poorly thought-out blockchain integrations.
Meanwhile, OpenAI has yet to respond publicly, though one can assume their executives are currently drafting a passive-aggressive Substack post explaining why Murati’s new lab is doomed to fail.
The AI world watches closely, popcorn in hand, as the latest battle for technological supremacy unfolds.
