Mira Murati, formerly the chief technology officer at OpenAI, has raised an undisclosed, reportedly massive sum for her nascent venture, Thinking Machines Lab, assigning the six-month-old company a valuation among Silicon Valley´s largest for a seed-stage round. The financing was spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional backing from Sarah Guo´s Conviction Partners. This remarkable capital infusion comes despite the company´s intense secrecy; Thinking Machines has not disclosed details about its product, business model, or future roadmap.
Murati, known for her pivotal role in launching OpenAI´s headline projects such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, left OpenAI in September 2024 amid internal power struggles. She stood among the key executives who questioned Sam Altman´s leadership prior to the failed board coup of November that briefly made her interim CEO. Since her departure, she’s drawn a coterie of notable former OpenAI staff to Thinking Machines, including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, along with former vice presidents Barret Zoph and Lilian Weng. The company claims a mission to make ´AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable,´ but remains otherwise tight-lipped about its actual technological advances or commercial plans.
Investor interest has largely centered on Murati´s formidable reputation and her proven leadership in Artificial Intelligence, rather than any tangible details about the startup´s development or vision. According to reports by the Financial Times and The Information, the deal structure heavily favors Murati, granting her controlling board voting power that eclipses other directors combined. Some investors opted out, citing lack of transparency and absence of a concrete plan. The move echoes a growing Silicon Valley trend of investing in founder-led, vision-driven Artificial Intelligence ventures with minimal disclosure—a precedent recently set by former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who twice raised significant rounds for Safe Superintelligence Inc. without revealing specifics of its research direction.
Industry observers are closely watching Thinking Machines Lab as it joins the swelling ranks of stealth-staged Artificial Intelligence startups flush with capital and high-profile personnel. The San Francisco-based company’s next move remains shrouded, as do the nature of its ambitions and technologies. The scale and profile of this raise underscore investors´ growing appetite for bets on vision and pedigree, even when the underlying technology remains hidden—challenging traditional norms of validation and transparency in the Artificial Intelligence startup ecosystem.
