Thinking Machines Lab, the AI venture founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, has appointed Soumith Chintala as its new chief technology officer following significant leadership changes that saw its previous CTO return to OpenAI.

Murati announced on X that the company has parted ways with CTO Barret Zoph, who has rejoined OpenAI along with co-founder Luke Metz and founding team member Sam Schoenholz. All three previously worked at OpenAI before joining Thinking Machines Lab.

OpenAI CEO of applications Fidji Simo confirmed the trio’s return, stating the move had been planned for several weeks. Zoph will report directly to Simo, while Metz and Schoenholz will report to Zoph.

Chintala brings extensive AI expertise to the role, having co-created PyTorch, an open-source machine learning framework originally developed at Meta where he served on the technical staff. He has been contributing to Thinking Machines Lab’s team and previously earned a bachelor’s degree in information science from India’s Vellore Institute of Technology in 2009.

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Murati described Chintala as a brilliant and seasoned leader whose contributions to AI over the past decade make him ideally suited for the position. She expressed enthusiasm about him assuming this expanded responsibility.

After serving as OpenAI’s CTO for six years, Murati departed in late 2024 and announced Thinking Machines Lab’s formation in early 2025. The startup has secured $2 billion in funding and recently launched its first product, the Tinker API, designed to provide AI researchers and developers with easier access to computing resources.

The leadership transition comes as the company works to establish itself in the competitive AI infrastructure market.

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