Thinking Machines Lab Raises Record $2 Billion in Seed Funding, Valued at $12 Billion

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round | TechCrunch

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati, officially closed a $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Monday, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. The deal, which includes participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street, values the startup at $12 billion, the spokesperson said. Several outlets reported in June that Thinking Machines Lab was close to closing this $2B funding round at a $10 billion valuation, but, apparently, that valuation has shot up in the last month. The deal marks one of the largest seed rounds -- or first funding rounds -- in Silicon Valley history, representing the massive investor appetite to back promising new AI labs. Thinking Machines Lab is less than a year old and has yet to reveal what it's working on. However, Murati peeled back the curtain on the company's first product a bit in a post on X Tuesday, claiming that the startup plans to unveil its work in the "next couple months," and it will include a "significant open source offering." Murati also said the product will be useful for researchers and startups building custom AI models. "Soon, we'll also share our best science to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems," said Murati. It's unclear if Murati means that Thinking Machines Lab will release an open AI model, as some of OpenAI's other competitors have done to undercut the ChatGPT-maker's offerings. A Thinking Machines Lab spokesperson declined to comment further. Since Murati launched her venture, Thinking Machines Lab has attracted some of her former coworkers at OpenAI, including John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz. Murati says her company is currently trying to staff up, specifically for people with a track record of "building successful AI-driven products from the ground up," according to the startup's website. Meta reportedly held talks to acquire Thinking Machines Lab in recent months to bolster its superintelligence efforts, but they didn't progress to a final offer. Thinking Machines Labs is one of a handful of AI startups that investors believe to be a legitimate threat to leading AI model developers today, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. With billions in funding, Murati may have enough of a war chest to train frontier AI models. Thinking Machines Labs previously struck a deal with Google Cloud to power its AI models. Surely, Thinking Machines Lab has an uphill battle to catch up with other AI labs. It's likely banking on novel research breakthroughs to set it apart; however, that's an increasingly difficult task as Meta, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and OpenAI invest billions in their own research teams.

Thinking Machines Lab Raises a Record $2 Billion, Announces Cofounders

Mira Murati and several other former OpenAI researchers are behind the buzzy AI startup, now valued at $12 billion and officially out of stealth. Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence company founded by top researchers who fled OpenAI, has raised a record $2 billion seed round that values the fledgling firm at $12 billion. The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included Nvidia, Accel, Cisco, and AMD -- among others. The mammoth investment reflects the ultracompetitive race to build advanced AI systems, as well as the premium placed on top AI talent. It is the largest seed funding round in history. Thinking Machines is led by CEO Mira Murati, who stepped down as OpenAI's chief technology officer last September. Her cofounders are John Schulman, a computer scientist who helped build ChatGPT; Barrett Zoph, ex-vice president of research at OpenAI; Lilian Weng, who worked on AI safety and robotics at the company, Andrew Tulloch, who worked on pretraining and reasoning; and Luke Metz, who worked on post-training at OpenAI. Thinking Machines Lab confirmed the team to WIRED on Tuesday, the first time it has publicly done so. Murati said in a post on X on Tuesday that Thinking Machines is developing multimodal AI that will interact with humans "through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate." She added that the company will release its first product within the next few months, noting that the release "will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom models." She said that the company would also release research "to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems." In just over a decade, AI has gone from a research backwater to a high-stakes and high-drama investment, recruitment, and dealmaking frenzy. The drama reached a new level in recent months as talk of AI firms like OpenAI nearing human or superhuman level AI intensified. (Thinking Machines Lab has been notably quiet on that front -- at least so far). Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also shaken up the industry by luring top researchers to a new superintelligence lab with promises of multimillion dollar pay packages. Zuckerberg has succeeded in bringing several OpenAI researchers over to the new project. Given their prominence and expertise, Thinking Machines' cofounders are highly likely to have been approached. The company declined to comment on the matter, however.

Mira Murati's AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12 billion in early-stage funding

July 15 (Reuters) - Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday it has raised about $2 billion at a valuation of $12 billion in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, Accel, ServiceNow (NOW.N), opens new tab, Cisco (CSCO.O), opens new tab, AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab and Jane Street, the startup said. The massive funding round for a company launched only in February, with no revenue or products yet, underscores Murati's ability to attract investors in a sector where top executives have become coveted targets in an escalating talent war. "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post, opens new tab on the X social media platform. Reuters had reported in April Andreessen Horowitz was in talks to lead an outsized early-stage funding round. Thinking Machines has said it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals. Nearly two-thirds of its team at launch comprised of former OpenAI employees. Murati, who started Thinking Machines after an abrupt exit from OpenAI last September, is among a growing list of former executives from the ChatGPT maker who have launched AI startups. Another two, Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, have attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions of dollars in funding. Investor enthusiasm toward new AI startups has stayed strong, despite some questions about tech industry spending. That helped U.S. startup funding surge nearly 76% to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, with AI accounting for about 64.1% of the total deal value, according to a Pitchbook report. Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Arun Koyyur Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati raises $2 billion for new AI startup Thinking Machines Lab

Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, speaks during The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 17, 2023. Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI, said Tuesday that her artificial intelligence startup Thinking Machines Lab has raised $2 billion in fresh capital and will announce its first product "in the next couple months." Murati rocketed into the spotlight in 2023 when she was named interim CEO of OpenAI after Sam Altman was briefly ousted by the company's board. She left OpenAI in September and launched Thinking Machines in February, though she has not shared many details about the startup publicly.

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Raises $2 Billion to Build Collaborative General Intelligence | AIM

It plans to release its first product within the next few months. Thinking Machines Lab, the AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion in funding to accelerate the development of its collaborative general intelligence platform. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with backing from major players including NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, Jane Street and others. "We're building multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world -- through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate," Murati posted on X as she announced the funding. The company, which emerged from stealth earlier this year, is working on an AI system that can function across modes of interaction and support natural human collaboration. It plans to release its first product within the next few months. According to Murati, the product will include a "significant open source component" and will be targeted at researchers and startups developing custom models. Murati, who previously led the teams behind ChatGPT and DALL·E at OpenAI and briefly served as its interim CEO, described the lab's mission as one that "empowers humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence." She also said the company would publish research to help the scientific community better understand frontier AI systems. "We believe AI should serve as an extension of individual agency and, in the spirit of freedom, be distributed as widely and equitably as possible," she said.

Thinking Machines, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raises $2B in seed funding - SiliconANGLE

Thinking Machines, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raises $2B in seed funding Artificial intelligence pioneer Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Inc. said today it has raised $2 billion, in what is likely to be one of the largest seed funding rounds ever disclosed. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and saw participation from a host of other illustrious investors, including Nvidia Corp., Accel, ServiceNow Inc., Cisco Ventures, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Jane Street Thinking Machines, which was founded by its Chief Executive Murati in February, had reportedly been holding talks with investors since April, and had originally been talking about a $10 billion valuation, but that number has since shot up, and it's now valued at $12 billion, it said today. The fact that such a young startup, which has not yet announced any products, was able to raise one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley's history, underscores not only the massive enthusiasm investors have for promising new AI companies, but also Murati's personal reputation as one of the industry's leading lights. Murati formerly served as the Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI and oversaw a number of advances during her time at the company, including the development of ChatGPT and the company's image generation model, DALL-E. She also played a key role in the development of OpenAI's GPT-4o reasoning model, which is more humanlike in the way it takes time to research and consider its responses to user prompts. In a post on X that announced today's round, Murati dropped a few hints about what the company's first product might be, saying it will unveil what it's working on in the "next couple months". She promised it will include a "significant open source offering" that will make it useful for researchers building custom AI models. "Soon, we'll also share our best science to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems," she said. That doesn't necessarily suggest Thinking Machines plans to launch a fully open-source AI model, as some of OpenAI's rivals have done in an effort to unseat the ChatGPT maker from its pole position in the AI industry. When she founded the company in February, Murati also spoke about "infrastructure quality" as being a top priority, and so that may be another focus of its work. She said at the time that "research productivity is paramount and heavily depends on the reliability, efficiency and ease of use of infrastructure", and added that the company aims to "build things correctly for the long haul". In addition, she also talked about how the AI models she's working on won't be specifically tailored to perform certain tasks, such as programming or math. Instead, she is designing models that will be able to "adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise" and fulfill a broader spectrum of applications. Murati is a talented AI developer, but she's not alone in driving Thinking Machines. She has also managed to convince a number of her former colleagues at OpenAI to join her at the company, including the research executive Barret Zoph, who serves as its CTO, and John Schulman, a co-founder of the ChatGPT developer, who has taken on the role of Chief Research Officer. According to Murati, the company is now looking to expand its team, eying talent that has a proven track record of building successful AI products from the ground up. Having invested billions of dollars into the startup, investors will be hoping that Thinking Machines' talented team now have the resources they need to catch up with, and perhaps one day even surpass industry stalwarts like OpenAI, Google LLC, Anthropic PBC and DeepMind Ltd. However, the startup will be keenly aware that it's facing an uphill struggle, as those rivals have all amassed many more billions of dollars and continue to push the needle as they race to try and achieve the ultimate goal of artificial general intelligence, or machines that surpass humans in their thinking.

OpenAI's former CTO Mira Murati's startup Thinking Machines raises $2 billion led by a16z - The Economic Times

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round that also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, the startup said.Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday that it has raised $2 billion in funding. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round that also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, the startup said. The massive funding round for a company launched only in February, with no revenue or products yet, underscores Murati's ability to attract investors in a sector where top executives have become coveted targets in an escalating talent war. Thinking Machines has said it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals. Nearly two-thirds of its team at launch comprised of former OpenAI employees. Murati, who started Thinking Machines after an abrupt exit from OpenAI last September, is among a growing list of former executives from the ChatGPT maker who have launched AI startups. Another two, Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, have both attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions of dollars in funding. Investor enthusiasm toward new AI startups has stayed strong, despite some questions about tech industry spending. That helped U.S. startup funding surge nearly 76% to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, with AI accounting for about 64.1% of the total deal value, according to a Pitchbook report.

Mira Murati's AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12 billion in early-stage funding

(Reuters) -Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday it has raised about $2 billion at a valuation of $12 billion in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, the startup said. The massive funding round for a company launched only in February, with no revenue or products yet, underscores Murati's ability to attract investors in a sector where top executives have become coveted targets in an escalating talent war. "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post on the X social media platform. Reuters had reported in April Andreessen Horowitz was in talks to lead an outsized early-stage funding round. Thinking Machines has said it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals. Nearly two-thirds of its team at launch comprised of former OpenAI employees. Murati, who started Thinking Machines after an abrupt exit from OpenAI last September, is among a growing list of former executives from the ChatGPT maker who have launched AI startups. Another two, Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, have attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions of dollars in funding. Investor enthusiasm toward new AI startups has stayed strong, despite some questions about tech industry spending. That helped U.S. startup funding surge nearly 76% to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, with AI accounting for about 64.1% of the total deal value, according to a Pitchbook report. (Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Arun Koyyur)

Mira Murati's AI startup Thinking Machines raises $2 billion in a16z-led round

(Reuters) -Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday that it has raised $2 billion in funding. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round that also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, the startup said. The massive funding round for a company launched only in February, with no revenue or products yet, underscores Murati's ability to attract investors in a sector where top executives have become coveted targets in an escalating talent war. Thinking Machines has said it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals. Nearly two-thirds of its team at launch comprised of former OpenAI employees. Murati, who started Thinking Machines after an abrupt exit from OpenAI last September, is among a growing list of former executives from the ChatGPT maker who have launched AI startups. Another two, Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence, have both attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions of dollars in funding. Investor enthusiasm toward new AI startups has stayed strong, despite some questions about tech industry spending. That helped U.S. startup funding surge nearly 76% to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, with AI accounting for about 64.1% of the total deal value, according to a Pitchbook report. (Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)