New York/Bengaluru — Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence start-up founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, said on Tuesday it has raised about $2bn at a valuation of $12bn in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, the start-up said.
The huge funding round for a company launched only in February, with no revenue or products yet, underscores Murati’s ability to attract investors in a sector where top executives have become coveted targets in an escalating talent war.
“We’re excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and start-ups developing custom model,” Murati said in a post on the X social media platform.
Reuters had reported in April Andreessen Horowitz was in talks to lead an outsized early-stage funding round.
Thinking Machines has said it wants to build AI systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals. Nearly two-thirds of its team comprises former OpenAI employees.
Murati, who started Thinking Machines after an abrupt exit from OpenAI last September, is among a growing list of former executives from the ChatGPT maker who have launched AI start-ups.
Another two, Dario Amodei’s Anthropic and Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, have attracted former OpenAI researchers and raised billions of dollars in funding.
Investor enthusiasm towards new AI start-ups has stayed strong, despite some questions about tech industry spending.
That helped US start-up funding surge nearly 76% to $162.8bn in the first half of 2025, with AI accounting for about 64.1% of the total deal value, according to a Pitchbook report.
Reuters
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