Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Aims for $2B Seed Round Without a Public Product
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Is Gunning for a $2 Billion Seed Round Here’s Why Everyone’s Watching
In the world of startups, seed rounds are usually lean and scrappy. A couple million here, a pitch deck there, maybe a decent prototype if you’re lucky. But Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is playing a whole different game. A $2 billion seed round? That’s not just ambitious—it’s historic.
What's more staggering is that the company is said to be chasing a $10 billion valuation, all before it has a public product, even a whisper of revenue. Most startups would be laughed out of a VC office attempting that. But Thinking Machines Lab is not like other startups—and the tech community is abuzz.
Betting on the People, Not the Product
So why are investors hovering with billion-dollar checks for a firm that just emerged from stealth?
The reason is talent. This isn't your typical founding team. In addition to Murati, who contributed to the development of GPT-4 during her stint at OpenAI, the startup has some of the most brilliant minds in AI. John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI and one of the leading figures behind reinforcement learning, is the chief scientist. Barret Zoph, who has done neural architecture search at Google Brain and OpenAI, is the CTO. Close to half of the 30 listed staff are former OpenAI, with the rest from Mistral, Meta, and DeepMind.
It takes brainpower like this to happen by itself—and it doesn't go unobserved.
When Reputation Becomes Currency
Menlo Ventures' Deedy Das recently made a blunt comment: in early-stage AI investing, the background of the team matters more than any existing product or revenue metric. And he's right.
"In an private market, particularly in early-stage venture capital, you hardly have revenue numbers, and you're making a bet on the team, the market, and their ability to execute," he said.
Currently, VCs are handling ex-OpenAI or DeepMind staff nearly like tech royalty. There's a perception—perhaps even a secret hope—that these individuals have something the rest of us don't. And when someone like Murati chooses to venture out on her own, people take notice.
So What Is Thinking Machines Lab Actually Building?
Excellent question. While the company has been tight-lipped about specifics, Murati has teased the big picture: multimodal AI systems that integrate text and image capabilities, designed with collaboration and transparency in mind. She highlighted the value of open science and establishing solid foundations for more powerful, responsible AI systems in a launch message.
If that sounds fuzzy, it's because it is. But that's sort of kind of the idea—this far in, the details are unsettled. What's more important is the direction: creating strong AI tools with humans at the center of the loop.
We already know what's going to happen when AI development outpaces the ability of society to keep up. Misinformation, hallucinations, ethical quandaries—it's all fair game. Murati appears to be positioning her company as a new type of laboratory: elite but accessible. Ambitious but judicious. Experimental but collaborative.
Why $2 Billion Isn't As Crazy As It Sounds
Alright, let's come back to that ginormous seed round. Is it overkill? Possibly. But considering today's environment, perhaps not.
AI is where investors would like to be today. With the success of OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and so on, everybody's trying to bet on the next big jump. And as opposed to software or fintech, training state-of-the-art models is prohibitively costly. You require compute power, data pipelines, elite researchers, and the runway to fail.
A $2 billion war chest allows Thinking Machines Lab space to develop slowly, hire intensely, and try things out without always watching their back for the next funding event.
Is This the Beginning of a New AI Era?
It may be premature to consider Thinking Machines Lab a game-changer, but it's certainly not another startup. The combination of ambition, brainpower, and funding muscle is unusual—even in Silicon Valley.
And whereas the tech space has had its share of hyped companies that busted, this does not have that same feel to it. Murati is not merely attempting to create buzz—she's attempting to create a company with sustained influence. Either way, the entire world will be observing.
In an environment that's as dynamic as AI, it's not necessarily a question of who goes first—it's a question of who goes right. And Mira Murati may be onto something.
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