Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Secures Record-Breaking $2B Seed Funding at $10B Valuation

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab closes on $2B at $10B valuation | TechCrunch

Thinking Machines Lab, the secretive AI startup founded by OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati, has closed a $2 billion seed round, according to The Financial Times. The deal values the six-month-old startup at $10 billion. The company's work remains unclear. The startup has leveraged Murati's reputation and other high-profile AI researchers who have joined the team to attract investors in what could be the largest seed round in history. According to sources familiar with the deal cited by the FT, Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Sarah Guo's Conviction Partners. Murati left OpenAI last September after leading the development of some of the company's most prominent AI products, including ChatGPT, DALL-E, and voice mode. Several of her former OpenAI colleagues have joined the new startup, including co-founder John Schulman. Murati is one of a handful of executives who left OpenAI after raising concerns about CEO Sam Altman's leadership in 2023. When the board ousted Altman in November of that year, Murati served as interim CEO before Altman was quickly reinstated.

Murati's Thinking Machines Raises Cash at $10 Billion Valuation

Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup launched by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, has raised close to $2 billion at a valuation of $10 billion before the investment, according to people familiar with the matter. Andreessen Horowitz led the funding round, with participation from Accel and Conviction Partners, among other investors, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. A spokesperson for Thinking Machines declined to comment. Representatives for the VC firms didn't comment. The Financial Times earlier reported some details of the funding.

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab valued at $10bn after $2bn fundraising

OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati has raised $2bn for her new artificial intelligence start-up, in a deal which values the mysterious six-month-old company at $10bn. The deal, which closed recently, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction, was one of the largest "seed" -- or initial -- funding rounds in Silicon Valley's history. San Francisco-based Thinking Machines Lab has not declared what it is working on, instead using Murati's name and reputation to attract investors, said those familiar with the fundraise. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Sarah Guo's Conviction Partners, said those with knowledge of the deal. The fundraise demonstrates the huge investor appetite in AI and faith in the vision of noteworthy founders to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Big Tech giants Google and Meta. Murati, 36, left OpenAI in September, having helped drive the creation of products such as ChatGPT, image-generator Dall-E and its voice mode. She had also been a senior product manager at Tesla, where she worked on the Model X. People with knowledge of the matter said she was one of the executives who had raised concerns about Sam Altman's leadership before a failed board coup to oust OpenAI's chief executive in November 2023. She was briefly named interim CEO before Altman was quickly reinstated. Thinking Machines has also hired a number of former OpenAI employees, including co-founder John Schulman, former head of special projects Jonathan Lachman, and former vice-presidents Barret Zoph and Lilian Weng. "There's a real finite group of founders, and incredibly smart people," one investor said. "The team [Murati has] pulled together is compelling." There was scant information on what the company is working on, however. In February, it said it aimed to make "AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable", without providing further details. Because of its highly clandestine nature, a number of funds that Murati pitched to passed on the deal, said multiple investors who were approached. One of these people added Murati's pitch offered no information about a product or financial plans. Another person said Thinking Machines was working on "artificial general intelligence", a hypothetical point where computers have similar or superior levels of intelligence to humans. But they added that, at the moment, the group was still "strategising". Following the funding round, Murati will hold board voting rights that outweigh all other directors combined, ensuring she has final say over all critical decisions at the company, said people familiar with the deal. The voting structure was first reported by The Information. A lack of product has also failed to deter investors from backing OpenAI's former co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who raised $2bn in April for his start-up Safe Superintelligence at a $32bn valuation.

Thinking Machines Lab's $2B Seed Round Is Biggest By A Long Shot

If you were to imagine the kind of startup likely to snag the largest seed round of all time, it would probably look something like Thinking Machines Lab. Launched and led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, and joined by AI heavy hitters from Meta, OpenAI, Google and Mistral AI, the San Francisco company certainly has a founding team that investors ought to like. And given prevailing valuations for leading AI unicorns, a $2 billion seed deal doesn't even sound that big in context. In reality, however, it is a round of unprecedented hugeness. The $2 billion Andreessen Horowitz-led financing that Thinking Machines reportedly just closed at a $10 billion valuation is by far the largest seed round in the Crunchbase dataset. It's not even close. The next-largest U.S. seed financings 1 have all been in the $200 million to $450 million range, including: In addition to its record-setting size, another standout characteristic of the Thinking Machines round is how little surprise it generated. This seems largely due to its status as a brainchild of top OpenAI alums. After all, if OpenAI managed to secure a recent $300 billion post-money valuation largely driven by the prowess of its team, it's reasonable to expect great things out of its early leaders in their solo ventures as well. And clearly Thinking Machines is laying out an ambitious mission. The company, founded last year, says its plans "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable," and also intends "to build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively."

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab raises $2 billion seed round at $10 billion valuation

The deal, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Conviction Partners (founded by ex-Greylock investor Sarah Guo), is among the largest-ever seed rounds in Silicon Valley's history -- underlining the investor frenzy surrounding AI model companies founded by ex-OpenAI leaders.Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion in a seed funding round, valuing the six-month-old venture at $10 billion, according to a report by the Financial Times. The deal, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Conviction Partners (founded by ex-Greylock investor Sarah Guo), is among the largest-ever seed rounds in Silicon Valley's history -- underlining the investor frenzy surrounding AI model companies founded by ex-OpenAI leaders. Thinking Machines Lab has hired a number of former OpenAI researchers, along with talent from Meta and French startup Mistral, to build a next-generation AI platform aimed at enabling more collaborative human-AI interaction. Founded in February 2025, the company is led by Murati as CEO and now counts a team of about 30 engineers and researchers, nearly two-thirds of whom are ex-OpenAI employees. Notably, John Schulman, cofounder of OpenAI and former head of alignment, has joined Thinking Machines Lab as chief scientist, marking his second move in under a year after briefly joining Anthropic in August 2024. Another key hire is Barret Zoph, a researcher who exited OpenAI on the same day as Murati in September 2024. The venture joins a growing list of AI model companies founded by former OpenAI executives. These include: Anthropic, co-founded by ex-OpenAI VP of research Dario Amodei, which recently hit $3 billion in annualised revenue Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI), co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, which is reportedly in talks to raise funds at a $20 billion valuation The departure of top talent from OpenAI, many of whom were involved in building early versions of GPT, has led to the formation of multiple rival labs, attracting billions of dollars from investors eager to bet on the next wave of general-purpose AI models.

Ex-OpenAI Tech Chief Raises $2 Billion for New AI Startup | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The artificial intelligence (AI) firm reached that valuation following a $2 billion funding deal, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (June 20). The recently closed deal was one of the biggest seed funding rounds in the history of Silicon Valley, the report added, citing sources familiar with the matter. Those sources said that Thinking Machine has not revealed much about its efforts, but has used the name and reputation of former OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati to woo investors. Murati stepped down from her role at OpenAI in September, and announced the launch of Thinking Machine in February. "Our goal is simple, advance AI by making it broadly useful and understandable through solid foundations, open science and practical applications," Murati said at the time. According to the FT, sources say Murati was one of the executives who flagged concerns about the leadership of CEO Sam Altman ahead of his short-lived removal in 2023. She served as interim CEO for a brief time before Altman was restored to the chief executive role. In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the transition of AI from "a buzzy experiment" to a critical piece of back-office infrastructure. As that report noted, there was a time when enterprise AI initiatives tended to be weighed down by vague objectives, data silos, a lack of talent, and fragmented -- if promising -- technology. "Fast forward to today, and the application of AI technologies, particularly those described as 'generative' or 'agentic,' is neither following the trajectory of unchecked enthusiasm nor stalling under the weight of its own complexity. Rather, it is unfolding incrementally and through the calibration of capability against operational necessity."