In a stunning show of investor confidence, Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup launched by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has just closed a $2 billion seed round—an eye-popping figure that now values the company at $12 billion, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and drew backing from some of the most powerful names in tech and finance, including Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street.
Just last month, reports had pegged the upcoming round at a $10 billion valuation. But clearly, in the fast-moving world of AI, things can escalate quickly. The final valuation is a full $2 billion higher than previously expected—highlighting how intensely the market is betting on the next generation of AI labs.
Despite being less than a year old and still operating in stealth, Thinking Machines Lab is now among the best-funded startups in Silicon Valley history at this early stage.
What Are They Building?
So far, the company has kept its core product under wraps. But on Tuesday, Murati teased more details in a post on X (formerly Twitter), promising a public reveal in the “next couple months.” She also shared that the first release will include a “significant open source offering,” and will be designed to help both researchers and startups build custom AI models.
“Soon, we’ll also share our best science to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems,” Murati posted.
She described the mission of Thinking Machines Lab as building multimodal AI—systems that understand and interact through text, vision, and other real-world modalities—designed to collaborate with people in more natural, intuitive ways.
In Murati’s words, the goal is “advancing collaborative general intelligence to empower humanity.”
It’s unclear whether this means the company plans to release an open AI model—something several of OpenAI’s competitors have done to gain traction and challenge the dominance of ChatGPT. A spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of what will be released.
A Team of AI Heavyweights
Murati isn’t going it alone. Several prominent former OpenAI colleagues have joined her, including John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz—all respected researchers with deep experience in AI model development.
The company is now hiring aggressively, seeking people with proven experience building AI-powered products from the ground up, according to its website.
Interestingly, Meta has reportedly held early talks to acquire Thinking Machines Lab in recent months as part of its efforts to accelerate its own superintelligence roadmap—but the discussions never progressed to a formal offer.
The Stakes Are High
Thinking Machines Lab is now seen as one of a small group of serious challengers to AI giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. With billions of dollars in fresh capital, the company is well-positioned to train frontier models—the kind that push the boundaries of what AI can do.
The startup has also secured a deal with Google Cloud to provide the computing power needed to build its models—further signaling that it’s in this for the long haul.
Still, the road ahead won’t be easy. The competition is fierce, and the biggest names in tech are pouring massive resources into their own research labs. To stand out, Murati and her team will likely need genuine breakthroughs, not just more compute.
But with this level of backing, the right talent, and a bold vision, Thinking Machines Lab could very well be the next big name in AI.
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