Exclusive | The Messy Human Drama That Dealt a Blow to One of AI’s Hottest Startups

Mira Murati’s meeting with her co-founders was going off the rails.

Murati, the chief executive of AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, had shown up for work on Monday last week expecting to have a one-on-one with Barret Zoph, her chief technology officer, according to people familiar with the matter. Last summer, she had learned that Zoph was in a relationship with a colleague; in the months since, she had expressed repeated concerns about his lack of productivity, according to the people.