MERE MOMENTS before Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of OpenAI, meets us at a conference room in the company’s San Francisco headquarters, another executive exits the space: cofounder and CEO Sam Altman. The nerdy frontman of the AI revolution darts in from another room, gathers his belongings—which, underwhelmingly, consist of just a laptop—and shuffles away quietly, clearing the path for Murati to take center stage.
It’s Altman who’s typically the public face of the best-known company in AI; in fact, he’d recently flown back from Washington, D.C., from talks with Congress about regulation. Less well known, but just as crucial to OpenAI’s soaring ascent, is Murati, who often tinkers just outside of the spotlight. Murati, 34, is the executive who manages the popular chatbot ChatGPT as well as DALL-E, an AI system that creates art from text—the products that have propelled OpenAI, which started eight years ago as a nonprofit research lab, to unforeseen heights.
After ChatGPT launched in November 2022, it amassed more than 100 million monthly active users in just two months, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. And as these products continue to evolve, sometimes in response to embarrassing or even disturbing glitches, it’s Murati who’s increasingly responsible for explaining the latest iterations to a public that can seem hyper-attuned to every breakthrough and misstep.
Indeed, OpenAI has been credited with single-handedly ushering in the latest evolution of technology—so-called generative AI. All that attention is translating to real dollars, too. While it’s estimated that ChatGPT’s growth with consumers has slowed in recent months, usage among corporate customers is booming. This year, OpenAI is reportedly on track to rake in more than $1 billion in revenue. (That would be quite
