Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, officially finalized a $2 billion seed funding round on Monday, as confirmed by a company spokesperson to TechCrunch. This funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
The transaction establishes the startup’s valuation at $12 billion. Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street participated in this seed round. Reports from June indicated that Thinking Machines Lab was nearing the completion of this $2 billion funding round with an anticipated valuation of $10 billion. The actual valuation, however, increased by $2 billion during the past month.
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. We’re…
— Mira Murati (@miramurati) July 15, 2025
This funding constitutes one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley. Thinking Machines Lab is less than one year old and has not yet disclosed its specific projects. Murati provided some details regarding the company’s initial product in a post on X on Tuesday. She stated that the startup intends to unveil its work within the “next couple months,” adding that it will include a “significant open source offering.” Murati also indicated that the product will be beneficial for researchers and startups developing custom AI models.
Murati further stated, “Soon, we’ll also share our best science to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems.” Thinking Machines Lab has not clarified whether this implies the release of an open AI model, a strategy adopted by some competitors of OpenAI. A spokesperson for Thinking Machines Lab declined to provide additional comments on this matter.
Since its inception, Thinking Machines Lab has attracted former OpenAI colleagues of Murati, including John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz. The company’s website indicates that Thinking Machines Lab is actively recruiting individuals with a demonstrated history of “building successful AI-driven products from the ground up.”
Meta reportedly engaged in discussions to acquire Thinking Machines Lab in recent months, aiming to enhance its superintelligence initiatives, but these talks did not advance to a definitive offer. Thinking Machines Lab is identified by investors as one of a select group of AI startups that pose a potential challenge to established AI model developers, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. The $2 billion in funding provides Thinking Machines Lab with resources to train frontier AI models. The company previously entered into an agreement with Google Cloud to power its AI models.
