Mira Murati, former chief technology officer of OpenAI, has raised a staggering $2 billion for her new artificial intelligence start-up, Thinking Machines Lab, in one of Silicon Valley’s largest-ever seed funding rounds. The deal, which closed recently, gives the six-month-old company a valuation of $10 billion — despite revealing almost nothing about its product roadmap or business model.
According to The Financial Times, the round was led by venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sarah Guo’s Conviction Partners and a select group of high-profile backers. Investors were reportedly drawn to Murati’s personal track record and the caliber of the team she has assembled — rather than any disclosed product or financials.
“There’s a real finite group of founders, and incredibly smart people,” one investor told the FT. “The team [Murati has] pulled together is compelling.”
Among the talent joining Murati at Thinking Machines are several OpenAI veterans, including co-founder John Schulman, former head of special projects Jonathan Lachman, and former vice-presidents Barret Zoph and Lilian Weng. The start-up has maintained a tightly guarded level of secrecy, with only vague statements about making AI “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable.”
People familiar with the matter said Thinking Machines is ultimately aiming to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a still-hypothetical level of machine intelligence on par with or exceeding human cognition. However, insiders noted the company remains in early strategic planning stages.
Murati, 36, was instrumental in building OpenAI’s most prominent products, including ChatGPT, DALL·E, and its voice-based interface. Before joining OpenAI, she held a senior role at Tesla, contributing to the development of the Model X. Her exit from OpenAI last September came amid internal tensions, and she was briefly named interim CEO during the attempted ouster of Sam Altman in November 2023 — an episode that shook the AI world.
Despite Thinking Machines offering no demo, business plan, or clear financial projections, the $2 billion raise underscores the current frenzy surrounding elite AI founders. The Financial Times also recently reported that Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI co-founder, secured $2 billion in April for his start-up Safe Superintelligence — also without a functioning product — at a $32 billion valuation.
In a sign of Murati’s dominance over her venture, sources told The Financial Times that she holds board voting rights outweighing all other directors combined, giving her the final say on all major company decisions. The structure was first disclosed by The Information.
Still, the opaque nature of Thinking Machines’ mission turned some investors away. Several funds declined to participate after receiving pitch materials that lacked details about the product or financial vision, according to multiple people approached during the fundraising process.
Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment on the funding or its future plans. For now, the company remains a mystery — albeit one with $2 billion in runway and the industry’s full attention.
