Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has secured a record‑breaking $2 billion in seed funding, catapulting its valuation to approximately $10 billion–$12 billion. The investment, led by top-tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and backed by heavyweights including Nvidia, AMD, Accel, Cisco, and Jane Street, marks the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history.

Founded in February 2025, Thinking Machines wasted no time assembling an elite team, drawing key talent from OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, and Google. Co-founders include notable names like John Schulman, Barrett Zoph, Lilian Weng, Andrew Tulloch, and Luke Metz—many of whom played pivotal roles in building ChatGPT, DALL‑E, and other high-profile AI systems.

Murati and her team are developing advanced multimodal AI systems capable of understanding language, images, voice, and context to interact with users in more intuitive, human-like ways. She stated the company’s first product—slated for release within months—will include significant open-source components and be tailored for researchers and startups building custom models.

The deal underscores the intense competition for AI talent and the high stakes of frontier AI development. With no revenue or public product yet, the company’s colossal seed round demonstrates exceptional investor trust in Murati’s vision and leadership. Thinking Machines operates as a public-benefit corporation under Murati’s direction, granting her weighted voting control on the board—ensuring she retains strategic authority as the company scales.

As the startup accelerates hiring and readies its debut product, the global AI community will be watching closely. With this unprecedented funding and leadership pedigree, Thinking Machines Lab is poised to challenge established players and shape the next chapter in multimodal and general-purpose AI systems.