Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Aims for Record-Breaking $2 Billion Seed Round

Mira Murati's AI startup is reportedly aiming for a massive $2B seed round | TechCrunch

Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup from ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. Business Insider reported on Thursday that Thinking Machines Lab has doubled the target for its seed funding round to $2 billion. The round, should it close according to plan, would value the company at "at least" $10 billion, per BI's reporting. Thinking Machines Lab only recently emerged from stealth, and has no product or revenue to speak of. What it does have -- and what's likely convincing investors to fork over cash -- is dozens of high-profile AI researchers in its ranks. Just recently, Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI's chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company's more transformative innovations, joined Thinking Machines Lab as advisers. Thinking Machines Lab previously said it intends to create AI systems that are "more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable" than those currently available.

A16z eyes leading mega round in former OpenAI CTO's startup Thinking Machines, sources say

SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (Reuters) - Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to lead an outsized early stage funding round of former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati's startup, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The startup, named Thinking Machines Lab, could be valued at $10 billion in the round, sources said, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in the world, despite only launching in February. The company, which has no revenue or products yet, is the latest entrant into the crowded space of companies building generative AI models. 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. Reuters couldn't learn how much Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to invest in this round. Business Insider reported earlier this week the final amount of the entire round could be close to $2 billion. Another VC heavyweight, Sequoia Capital, is also in talks to join the funding round, another source said. Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The reception shows that investor enthusiasm toward new startups in AI remains extremely high, despite some questions about tech industry spending. An initial round of this size is not unprecedented: In September, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever raised $1 billion, opens new tab based on his reputation in the field. Andreessen Horowitz, known as A16z, has made big bets in AI, backing competitors to AI heavyweight OpenAI. It has participated in large funding rounds for AI model startups including Elon Musk's xAI, Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence and France-based Mistral. It is currently raising a $20 billion megafund dedicated to later-stage investments in AI companies. If successfully raised, it would be the largest fund in the firm's history. Murati announced Thinking Machines Lab in February with a team of around 30 leading AI researchers and engineers, two-thirds of whom were former OpenAI employees, showing Murati's ability to poach her previous employer's top talent. Since then, other former prominent OpenAI employees have joined Thinking Machines as advisers, including OpenAI's former chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and the lead researcher for many of OpenAI's flagship AI models, Alec Radford. At OpenAI, Murati spent over six years spearheading transformative projects like ChatGPT and DALL-E, and was a key figure in OpenAI's multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, its largest financial backer. She frequently appeared alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker. Her abrupt resignation in September last year was part of a slew of high-profile exits from OpenAI, and she joined a growing list of former OpenAI executives launching rival startups, such as Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence. Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence Anna Tong Thomson Reuters Anna Tong is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where she reports on the technology industry. She joined Reuters in 2023 after working at the San Francisco Standard as a data editor. Tong previously worked at technology startups as a product manager and at Google where she worked in user insights and helped run a call center. Tong graduated from Harvard University. Krystal Hu Thomson Reuters Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines reportedly raising $2B in funding - SiliconANGLE

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines reportedly raising $2B in funding Thinking Machines Lab Inc., an artificial intelligence startup led by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, is reportedly raising a $2 billion seed round. Business Insider reported the company's fundraising effort today. The publication cited two sources as saying that the round could value Thinking Machines at upwards of $10 billion. In March, Insider reported that the company was seeking to raise $1 billion round at a $9 billion valuation. Thinking Machines launched in February to build multimodal AI models with reasoning features. The company is led by Mira Murati, who was previously OpenAI's CTO for three years. During her time at the latter company, she oversaw the development of ChatGPT and the DALL-E series of image generation models. The Thinking Machines leadership team also includes other former OpenAI executives. John Schulman, one of the latter company's co-founders, holds the role of chief scientist. ChatGPT co-creator Barret Zoph is Thinking Machines' CTO. On Tuesday, TechCrunch reported that the company had quietly appointed two other former OpenAI staffers as advisors. One of them is Bob McGrew, who was ChatGPT developer's Chief Research Officer until last September. The other new adviser, Alec Radford, was the lead author of the academic paper that presented the GPT language model architecture. Thinking Machines stated in a February blog post that its AI will be "at the frontier of capabilities in domains like science and programming." However, the company hinted that its models will be more flexible than existing algorithms optimized for such tasks. "We're building AI that can adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise," the company's staffers wrote. Thinking Machines plans to equip its models with multimodal features. The company hasn't specified whether those features will focus solely on processing multimodal input, or whether they will also allow the models to generate media files such as images and videos. Thinking Machines did, however, detail that it plans to make its AI easier to customize than existing algorithms. The company plans to open-source at least some of the software its engineers will develop. In the February blog post, Thinking Machines hinted that the open-source initiative will place particular emphasis on sharing technologies related to AI safety. "We plan to frequently publish technical blog posts, papers, and code," the company's staffers wrote. Training frontier AI models requires a significant amount of infrastructure. The $2 billion that Thinking Machines is reportedly raising would make it considerably simpler for the company to source the necessary hardware. According to Insider, the round is "round is in progress" and the details could still change.

Mira Murati's New AI Startup Targets Record-Breaking $2 Billion Seed Round | AIM Media House

The company has reportedly doubled its initial fundraising target and aims to secure a valuation of at least $10 billion. Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to raise a $2 billion seed funding round. If realised, this would make it one of the largest seed rounds in startup history. The company has doubled its initial fundraising target and is now aiming to secure a valuation of at least $10 billion, Business Insider reported. The move has caught the attention of the tech and investment industries, especially considering that Thinking Machines Lab only recently came out of stealth and currently has no public product or revenue. AIM had previously spoken with Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures to discuss whether the current state of AI funding is grounded in reality. Das mentioned that VCs are eager to make substantial bets on companies founded by former employees of OpenAI, Anthropic or DeepMind, as they believe these individuals might discover something that current labs might not. "In a private market, especially in early-stage venture capital, you barely have revenue numbers, and you're making a bet on the team, the market and their ability to execute," he had said. Despite its early stage, the startup has attracted a number of high-profile figures from the AI research community, including the company's chief scientist John Schulman and chief technology officer Barret Zoph -- both of whom are former OpenAI employees. Nearly half of the company's 30 listed staff members previously worked at OpenAI alongside others from Mistral, Meta, and DeepMind. Headquartered in San Francisco, the startup is focused on building multimodal models for text and images, with a focus on human collaboration. During its launch, Murati revealed that the company is trying to develop strong foundations to build more capable AI systems and foster a culture of open science that will help the whole field understand and improve these systems.

Why investors are throwing $2 billion at Mira Murati

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly aiming to raise a staggering $2 billion in its seed funding round -- doubling its initial target from just weeks ago. According to Business Insider, this latest fundraising push would value the company at a minimum of $10 billion, marking one of the largest seed rounds in tech history. The report comes just a month after Murati's startup was seeking $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation, showing how quickly investor appetite for top-tier AI talent has escalated. Thinking Machines Lab is still in its earliest stages, with no product, no revenue, and very little public detail about its technology. What it does have, however, is a growing roster of some of the most influential minds in artificial intelligence -- and that's proving more than enough to draw billions from investors. Since emerging from stealth, the company has hired or attracted advisors like: In addition to OpenAI veterans, Murati has also recruited talent from Meta, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Character AI, turning Thinking Machines Lab into something of a who's-who of AI's elite developers. Publicly, Murati has described her mission in broad terms: to build AI systems that are "more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable" than current offerings. In a blog post earlier this year, she positioned the company's goal as improving accessibility in AI -- making powerful tools more flexible and transparent to end users. But the company's exact product plans remain unclear. Sources suggest that the early focus is less about launching a product quickly and more about building a world-class research lab capable of challenging incumbents like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Murati is the latest in a growing list of former OpenAI executives launching billion-dollar ventures. The trend is reshaping the landscape of advanced AI research: Despite having no product or defined commercial direction, Thinking Machines Lab sits at the heart of an extraordinary moment in AI investing. For top-tier founders with OpenAI credentials, funding seems almost limitless. Murati's rise also comes after her dramatic exit from OpenAI, following the chaotic leadership crisis that briefly saw her appointed interim CEO when Sam Altman was fired in November 2023. Altman later returned to the CEO role, and Murati left OpenAI in September 2024 to chart her own path. Now, less than a year later, she's leading one of the most ambitious AI ventures in Silicon Valley -- backed not by products, but by people. If the $2 billion seed round closes as expected, Thinking Machines Lab would instantly become one of the best-capitalized AI startups in the world -- before shipping a single product. Whether Murati can translate this war chest and talent pool into breakthrough AI systems remains to be seen. But the pattern is clear: in the world of generative AI, it's not just about what you've built -- it's about who you've built it with.

A16z eyes leading mega round in former OpenAI CTO's startup Thinking Machines, sources say

Andreessen Horowitz, known as A16z, has made big bets in AI, backing competitors to AI heavyweight OpenAI. It has participated in large funding rounds for AI model startups including Elon Musk's xAI, Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence and France-based Mistral.Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to lead an outsized early stage funding round of former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati's startup, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The startup, named Thinking Machines Lab, could be valued at $10 billion in the round, sources said, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in the world, despite only launching in February. The company, which has no revenue or products yet, is the latest entrant into the crowded space of companies building generative AI models. 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. Reuters couldn't learn how much Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to invest in this round. Business Insider reported earlier this week the final amount of the entire round could be close to $2 billion. Another VC heavyweight, Sequoia Capital, is also in talks to join the funding round, another source said. Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The reception shows that investor enthusiasm toward new startups in AI remains extremely high, despite some questions about tech industry spending. An initial round of this size is not unprecedented: In September, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever raised $1 billion based on his reputation in the field. Andreessen Horowitz, known as A16z, has made big bets in AI, backing competitors to AI heavyweight OpenAI. It has participated in large funding rounds for AI model startups including Elon Musk's xAI, Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence and France-based Mistral. It is currently raising a $20 billion megafund dedicated to later-stage investments in AI companies. If successfully raised, it would be the largest fund in the firm's history. Murati announced Thinking Machines Lab in February with a team of around 30 leading AI researchers and engineers, two-thirds of whom were former OpenAI employees, showing Murati's ability to poach her previous employer's top talent. Since then, other former prominent OpenAI employees have joined Thinking Machines as advisers, including OpenAI's former chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and the lead researcher for many of OpenAI's flagship AI models, Alec Radford. At OpenAI, Murati spent over six years spearheading transformative projects like ChatGPT and DALL-E, and was a key figure in OpenAI's multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft, its largest financial backer. She frequently appeared alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker. Her abrupt resignation in September last year was part of a slew of high-profile exits from OpenAI, and she joined a growing list of former OpenAI executives launching rival startups, such as Dario Amodei's Anthropic and Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence.

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati Targets Record-Breaking $2 Billion Seed Round For New AI Startup - Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), SoftBank Group (OTC:SFTBF)

Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of ChatGPT-parent OpenAI, is reportedly seeking to raise a staggering $2 billion seed round for her new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab. What Happened: The amount is twice the amount Murati was targeting just under two months ago, when she was said to be seeking around $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation, reported Business Insider, citing people familiar with the matter. If confirmed, it would be one of the largest seed rounds in tech history, dwarfing previous records and reaffirming the continued investor frenzy around artificial intelligence. See Also: Arm Aims for 50% Data Center CPU Market Share by 2025, Challenging Intel and AMD Consider OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who raised $1 billion in seed funding for his new venture, Safe Superintelligence -- a company that has already been pegged with a massive $30 billion valuation. Another notable example is Sierra, a conversational AI startup launched in 2023 by Bret Taylor, who also chairs OpenAI and previously co-led Salesforce. That company has reportedly reached a valuation of $4.5 billion. It also reflects a broader trend: seed rounds, especially in AI, are getting bigger. In 2015, the largest seed round was just $50 million. In 2025, PitchBook lists the largest closed seed at $200 million, noted Fortune. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It Matters: Murati launched Thinking Machines shortly after departing OpenAI in late 2024. Though details of the company's product or service remain vague, its website states its mission is "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable." Thinking Machines' team includes OpenAI veterans such as chief scientist John Schulman, who co-led the development of ChatGPT, and advisors Alec Radford and Bob McGrew. Schulman reportedly left Anthropic after a short tenure to reunite with Murati on the new venture. Meanwhile, earlier this month, OpenAI also secured a historic $40 billion funding round, pushing its valuation to $300 billion. Major backers in the round include SoftBank Group SFTBF SFTBY and Microsoft Corp. MSFT. According to data from PitchBook, this marks the largest funding round ever recorded and nearly doubles OpenAI's prior valuation of $157 billion. Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: OpenAI And Microsoft Back MCP Standard For Web-Surfing AI Agents; Google's Sundar Pichai Asks A Shakespearean Question Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock MSFTMicrosoft Corp$380.76-0.15%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum47.58Growth64.72Quality38.98Value13.35Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewSFTBFSoftBank Group Corp$42.29-%SFTBYSoftBank Group Corp$21.98-%Got Questions? AskHow will Mira Murati's venture impact AI investments?Which companies will benefit from Thinking Machines Lab innovations?What sectors might see growth from AI funding increases?How will OpenAI's valuation affect competitors?Which tech startups could follow suit with large funding rounds?Who else might join Mira Murati in the AI space?What market trends are emerging from the AI boom?How could SoftBank's investment in OpenAI influence future AI ventures?Which AI companies are primed for acquisition after massive funding?Is there potential for public offerings from new AI startups?Powered ByMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs