Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati receives $2B from top investors: "Thinking Machines Lab" valued at $12 billion
- Graziano Stefanelli
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
A record-setting seed round brings the startup’s valuation to $12 billion.
The $2 billion funding led by Andreessen Horowitz is one of the largest in Silicon Valley history.
Thinking Machines Lab, the new venture founded by Mira Murati (former CTO of OpenAI), has closed a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion post-money valuation. The amount surpasses the initial $10 billion estimate and confirms investors’ appetite for cutting-edge AI projects, despite the absence of any products on the market so far.
Major investors and their strategic roles in the round.
Backers include Nvidia, AMD, Jane Street, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, and others, each offering complementary expertise.
The lead investor, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is a major venture capital firm backing tech giants like Facebook and Airbnb. Their presence adds credibility and strong industry networks.
Nvidia and AMD, leaders in GPU hardware, provide top-tier chips and AI infrastructure. Jane Street specializes in quantitative finance, supporting applications in trading and analytics.
Accel brings expertise in technology company growth and international expansion. ServiceNow and Cisco dominate enterprise software and networking, supporting secure, scalable AI adoption.
Investor | Sector | Strategic Contribution |
Andreessen Horowitz | Venture Capital | Lead investor, round coordination |
Nvidia | AI Hardware | GPU technologies and infrastructure support |
AMD | AI Hardware | GPU backup and model optimization |
Jane Street | Quantitative Trading | Validation of financial use cases |
Accel | Venture Capital | Corporate network expansion |
ServiceNow | Enterprise Software | Integration with enterprise IT workflows |
Cisco | Networking | Secure and scalable networking support |
The mission and core team behind Thinking Machines Lab.
Objective: develop multimodal AI for natural interactions and human–machine collaboration.
Founded in February 2025 in San Francisco, the startup aims to create AI systems capable of understanding and responding via text, images, and voice conversation. Mira Murati—known for her crucial role in ChatGPT and DALL·E—has recruited top talent such as John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz, coming from OpenAI, Google, and Mistral. The company is set up as a public-benefit corporation, focusing on open research and customizable models for enterprise clients.
Comparison with other AI startups: round size and technology focus.
Thinking Machines Lab ranks among the most highly funded, targeting collaborative AGI.
Startup | Round Date | Post-Money Valuation | Main Focus |
Thinking Machines Lab | Jul 2025 (seed) | $12 billion | Multimodal AI, collaboration |
Safe Superintelligence | 2025 (Series A) | $5 billion | AGI safety |
xAI (Grok) | Jan 2025 (seed) | $10 billion | Multimodal chatbot |
Anthropic Vertical AI | Jul 2025 (launch) | n.a. | Vertical AI for finance |
Next steps and product roadmap.
The first proof-of-concept, including an open-source component, will be unveiled within months, according to Murati’s vision.
In the company’s statement, Murati previews the release of a proof-of-concept that will feature an open-source module to encourage research and the development of custom models. The goal is to demonstrate multimodal generation and natural interaction capabilities by the end of 2025. The startup has already signed an agreement with Google Cloud for scalable training infrastructure and continues to recruit engineers with experience in high-impact AI products.
______
FOLLOW US FOR MORE.
DATA STUDIOS
