Kamal Ghorui
Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer (CTO) who also briefly served as the company’s CEO in 2023 , testified in court that Sam Altman created distrust and confusion among senior leaders at the company. Her testimony came during the ongoing lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI, where Musk has accused the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission. Hours after reports about Murati’s testimony surfaced online, Musk publicly responded to a social media post calling her one of the key witnesses in the case. Musk wrote, “Mira is cool,” followed by a heart emoji, drawing attention online amid the high-profile legal battle.
Mira Murati says Sam Altman ‘created chaos’
Murati’s recorded testimony was played in a federal court in Oakland, California, during the second week of the trial. Speaking about CEO Sam Altman, she said: “My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person.”She also claimed Sam Altman was “creating chaos” inside the company and said there were times when he was deceptive with her and other executives. Murati added that despite these concerns, she still wanted Altman to remain CEO after he was temporarily removed from the company in 2023.“OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart,” she said. “I was concerned about the company completely blowing up.”
When Mira Murati briefly served as OpenAI CEO
After Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI by the board of directors in November 2023, Murati briefly served as the company’s CEO. In her testimony, she revealed that she had supported an effort to bring Altman back as CEO, pressing board members for a fuller explanation for why they’d ousted him.“I realized the board had not followed a process that could be trusted with regards to firing Sam,” Murati said. “As we can see in retrospect, the way [board members] handled it caused complete and utter chaos.”Mira Murati left OpenAI in September 2024 to start her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab.
Mira Murati calls Satya Nadella a “voice of reason”
In her testimony, Mira Murati revealed that she kept in close contact with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the tumultuous time at OpenAI. Text messages were displayed in the court that showed she texted Nadella asking that he call her to coordinate “how to talk with sam here.”Murati called Satya Nadella a “voice of reason,” adding, “it was kind of a crazy situation.” The former OpenAI executive said that rivals, specifically Google and Musk’s AI outfits tried to swoop in to poach OpenAI staff.“Very important we don’t lose researches to Demis or Elon,” Murati reportedly texted Nadella, referring to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s DeepMind.
