Lilian WengLilian Weng

AI researcher with a bachelor's from Peking University and a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington. She joined OpenAI in 2017,where she led the robotics project that taught a robotic hand to solve a Rubik's Cube,then founded and led the Applied AI Research team,delivering the fine-tuning,embeddings and moderation APIs. She rose to Vice President of Research,Safety over a roughly seven-year tenure,and is widely known for her technical blog 'Lil'Log.' After departing OpenAI in November 2024,she co-founded Thinking Machines Lab in February 2025 with Mira Murati. In 2026 she announced she was leaving Thinking Machines Lab — saying the co-founder role was taking a toll on her health and she wanted a more focused position — and was reported to be rejoining OpenAI to work on recursive self-improvement; she was the fourth TML co-founder to depart within a year.