Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Secures $2 Billion in Seed Funding

Thinking Machines Lab Secures Significant Funding

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, has officially closed a $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The deal, which includes participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street, values the startup at $12 billion.

Several outlets reported that Thinking Machines Lab was close to closing this $2B funding round at a $10 billion valuation, but the valuation has increased in the last month. The deal marks one of the largest seed 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 has stated 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.

Thinking Machines Lab exists to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence. The company is building multimodal AI that works with how people naturally interact with the world. Since Murati launched her venture, Thinking Machines Lab has attracted some of her former coworkers at OpenAI.

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.” 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. With billions in funding, Murati may have enough of a war chest to train frontier AI models. Thinking Machines Lab has an uphill battle to catch up with other AI labs, but it’s likely banking on novel research breakthroughs to set it apart.