Mira Murati's secretive startup Thinking Machines Lab raises $2B

Mira Murati, OpenAI's former chief technology officer, has secured $2 billion in funding for her six-month-old startup Thinking Machines Lab, valuing the secretive company at $10 billion in one of Silicon Valley's largest seed rounds ever. Andreessen Horowitz led the round with participation from Sarah Guo's Conviction Partners.

Murati, 36, left OpenAI in September after helping create ChatGPT, DALL-E, and other breakthrough products. She was among the executives who raised concerns about Sam Altman's leadership before the failed board coup in November 2023. Murati was named OpenAI's interim CEO during the brief period that preceded Altman's reinstatement.

Thinking Machines has assembled an impressive roster of former OpenAI talent, including co-founder John Schulman and former VPs Barret Zoph and Lilian Weng. The company claims to be working on making "AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable," though specifics remain vague.

The San Francisco-based startup has revealed virtually nothing about its actual product, instead relying on Murati's reputation and track record to attract investors. Several investors passed on the deal due to the lack of product details or financial plans. According to reports by the Financial Times and The Information, Thinking Machines' current funding structure grants Mira Murati board voting rights that outweigh the other directors' votes combined.

It has become less uncommon to see startups raising funding without revealing virtually anything about their product or roadmap. Following a similar pattern, former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever raised two rounds for Safe Superintelligence Inc. without publicizing any details about its research. In the most recent round, Sutskever secured $2 billion for his AGI startup, whose valuation is now placed at $32 billion.