MIRA MURATI EMERGES FROM 18 MONTHS OF SILENCE — THE FORMER OPENAI CTO IS BUILDING AI THAT TALKS BACK IN REAL TIME Mira Murati, who served as chief technology officer at OpenAI before abruptly departing in late 2024, made her first major public appearance in 18 months at Bloomberg Tech 2026 in San Francisco on June 4th. She was careful and deliberate. She did not trash OpenAI. She did not make big claims. But what she described about her startup, Thinking Machines Lab, was notable on its own merits. The company, which raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation last July led by Andreessen Horowitz, is focused on what Murati calls interaction models. The idea is an AI system designed not for isolated question-and-answer exchanges but for continuous, real-time conversation with a target response latency of 200 milliseconds, roughly the speed of a human blink. Nvidia signed a multiyear chip supply deal with Thinking Machines in March, committing its upcoming Vera Rubin accelerators to the company. The first product, called Tinker, is an API for fine-tuning open-source AI models. Reports from earlier this year indicated Thinking Machines was in talks for a $50 billion valuation that ultimately fell apart, which makes her reappearance now feel timed. An IPO season is beginning, money is moving, and Murati has positioned herself at the intersection of the two things the market cares about most right now: latency and agents. Keywords: Mira Murati Thinking Machines Lab, OpenAI former CTO, interaction models AI, AI startup 2026, Mira Murati Bloomberg Tech