Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab raises $2B at $12B valuation
The firm will roll out its first product in the coming months, featuring a significant open-source component that will be useful for researchers and startups as they develop custom models and explore frontier AI systems.
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has closed a $2 billion funding round at a $12 billion valuation.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street.
“Thinking Machines Lab exists to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence. 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,” said CEO Mira Murati in a post on X.
She further stated that the team will roll out its first product, featuring a significant open‑source component, which will be useful for researchers and startups in the coming months, developing custom models and better understanding frontier AI systems.
In September last year, Murati left OpenAI after a tenure of six-and-a-half years. In an internal memo to the company, she said she was stepping away to create the time and space to do her "exploration".
Thinking Machines Lab aims to bridge key gaps in AI by making these systems more understandable, customisable, and generally capable.
The Aartificial intelligence research and product firm will primarily focus on open science, releasing research publications and code while focusing on human-AI collaboration across industries. It will also integrate state-of-the-art model intelligence, high-quality infrastructure, and advanced multimodal capabilities.
According to a report on Reuters, nearly 20 members of its founding team are former OpenAI employees, including CTO Barret Zoph (co‑creator of ChatGPT), Andrew Tulloch, and Brydon Eastman.
“We’re always looking for extraordinary talent that learns by doing, turning research into useful things. 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. We hope this vision resonates with those who share our commitment to advancing the field,” said Murati.
Edited by Swetha Kannan