Thinking Machines Lab Hits $12B Valuation with Historic Seed Round
Thinking Machines Lab Secures $2B Seed Round at $12B Valuation
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has made headlines by closing a record-breaking $2 billion seed funding round. The investment, announced on Monday, was spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz and included support from tech giants like NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street. This ambitious round values the young company at an impressive $12 billion, highlighting the intense interest surrounding cutting-edge AI innovation.
Unprecedented Funding for a Stealthy AI Lab
Thinking Machines Lab is less than a year old and has yet to publicly unveil its core technology or products. Despite this, investor enthusiasm has soared. Earlier reports suggested the funding round would close at a $10 billion valuation, but the figure has since climbed, reflecting growing confidence in the team's capabilities and vision.
The $2 billion seed round stands out as one of Silicon Valley's largest on record, demonstrating an ongoing appetite to back promising AI ventures at their earliest stages.
What Is Thinking Machines Lab Building?
Mira Murati offered a glimpse into the company's direction on social media, hinting that an initial product reveal is only months away. She emphasized a commitment to open source, stating the upcoming release will be "a significant open source offering" intended to benefit both researchers and startups developing bespoke AI models.
Murati added, "Soon, we’ll also share our best science to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems." She described Thinking Machines Lab's mission as building collaborative, multimodal AI that aligns with natural human interaction—across conversation, vision, and real-world collaboration.
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
See the original tweet
Strategic Talent and Partnerships
Since its founding, Thinking Machines Lab has attracted several former OpenAI colleagues, including John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz. The company is actively recruiting talent with experience in building successful AI-driven products.
On the infrastructure front, Thinking Machines Lab has already partnered with Google Cloud to power its AI models, ensuring the computational muscle needed for advanced research and development.
A New Challenger in the AI Arena
With a war chest of billions, Thinking Machines Lab is poised to challenge established players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Investors and industry watchers see the startup as a credible contender in developing next-generation AI models and research. There have even been reports of acquisition interest from Meta, though talks did not progress to a final offer.
The road ahead will be demanding, as competition intensifies and major tech companies pour resources into their own AI labs. Still, with its stellar team, deep funding, and an open approach, Thinking Machines Lab is one to watch as it prepares to unveil its first innovations.
