Thinking Machines Lab closed a massive $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup is now valued at $12 billion. Investors include NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street.
The raise ranks among the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history. The company is less than a year old and hasn’t revealed much about its product yet.
Founder Mira Murati, former OpenAI CTO, teased on X that Thinking Machines Lab will launch something in the “next couple months” with a “significant open source offering.” The product aims to support researchers and startups building custom AI models. 
Mira Murati said:
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…
It’s unclear if this means an open AI model similar to those launched by OpenAI rivals.
The startup has attracted ex-OpenAI engineers like John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz. It’s currently hiring people experienced in building AI-driven products from scratch.
Meta reportedly held talks to acquire Thinking Machines Lab but never made an offer.
Thinking Machines Lab is seen as a viable competitor to AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. It has a deal with Google Cloud to power its AI models.
The startup faces a tough road competing with billion-dollar AI labs, but with fresh funding, it’s set to push hard in the AI race.
