AI company Thinking Machines, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has raised approximately $2 billion in investment in a round at a $10 billion valuation. This is one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.
AI company Thinking Machines, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has raised approximately $2 billion in investment in a round at a $10 billion valuation. This is one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.
According to Bloomberg, Andreessen Horowitz was the lead investor, with Accel and Conviction Partners also participating. Despite the company being in its early stages, the funding is more than most startups raise in their entire lifetime.
Thinking Machines has yet to publicly reveal what it’s working on. In February, the company published a blog post that talked about developing AI models focused on «deeper collaboration between humans and AI.» It’s likely a new type of product in the area of generative AI.
Murati left OpenAI after a brief stint as interim CEO during the conflict surrounding the return of Sam Altman. Several key people left the company with her, including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and former VP of research Barrett Zoff, who joined Thinking Machines.
While the startup team avoids public presentations, the volume of investments and the level of investors involved indicate ambitious plans. Especially considering the rapid growth of competition in the market for large language models, where OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Google DeepMind, Mistral, and Cohere are already operating.
Thinking Machines remains a mystery for now, with no products, demos, or concrete announcements. But given Murati’s background and the scale of the funding, the industry will be watching closely to see what happens next.
We also previously published an article about how OpenAI is buying an artificial intelligence device development startup co-founded by Apple Inc. veteran Jony Ive for almost $6.5 billion. By joining forces with the legendary designer, OpenAI plans to make a breakthrough in the field of hardware.
