Murati’s Thinking Machines raises $2 bn at $10 bn valuation: Bloomberg

Mira Murati’s new artificial intelligence venture, Thinking Machines, has raised a staggering $2 billion in seed funding at a $10 billion pre-money valuation, according to Bloomberg. The round, one of the largest seed financings in tech history, signals surging investor confidence in AI-native leadership despite the company having no public product or revenue to date.

The raise was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Accel, Conviction Partners, and reportedly a sovereign contribution from the Albanian government, Murati’s country of origin. The firm, founded earlier this year after Murati’s departure from OpenAI, is structured as a public benefit corporation and headquartered in San Francisco.

Though details remain scarce, Bloomberg reports that Thinking Machines aims to build more interpretable, controllable, and human-aligned AI systems. Murati has assembled a powerhouse team that includes OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, researcher Barret Zoph, and former OpenAI advisor Bob McGrew.

The company’s board structure gives Murati majority control, echoing governance models adopted by other mission-oriented AI firms. Her reputation as a central architect of GPT-4 and ChatGPT appears to have catalysed a fundraising environment where venture capitalists are backing founders first and products later.

In the broader context of AI investment, Thinking Machines joins a growing list of startups led by OpenAI alumni attracting massive early-stage funding, including Safe Superintelligence Inc and Anthropic. The Bloomberg report notes that Murati’s fundraise may become a defining moment in this new era of AI venture capitalism​,​ where vision, pedigree, and urgency outweigh conventional startup metrics.

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