Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has secured a record-breaking $2 billion seed round for her artificial intelligence startup, Thinking Machines Lab.
What Happened: The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, according to Murati’s post on X, with participation from Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), Accel, ServiceNow Inc. (NYSE:NOW), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), and Jane Street.
The funding represents one of the largest seed rounds in tech history, doubling Murati’s initial $1 billion target reported just two months prior. The investment minimum for participants was set at $50 million per check, signaling institutional confidence in the venture’s potential.
Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab in early 2025 after departing OpenAI in late 2024. The company’s mission centers on developing “multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world – through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate,” Murati wrote on X.
The startup has assembled a team of former OpenAI executives, including Chief Scientist John Schulman, who co-led ChatGPT development, and advisors Alec Radford and Bob McGrew. The company promises to release its first product within months, featuring a significant open-source component designed for researchers and startups developing custom models.
The funding comes as AI talent wars intensify across Silicon Valley. H-1B visa filings reveal Thinking Machines Lab offers base salaries averaging $462,500, with some technical employees earning up to $500,000 annually, significantly higher than OpenAI’s average of under $300,000.
Why It Matters: Murati’s departure from OpenAI followed a turbulent period where she briefly served as interim CEO during Sam Altman‘s temporary ouster in November 2023. Her AI career began in 2018 as VP of applied AI at OpenAI after previous roles at Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA).
The funding reflects continued investor appetite for AI ventures despite market uncertainties. OpenAI recently raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation, while competitor Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence secured $1 billion in seed funding at a $30 billion valuation.
Thinking Machines Lab plans to advance “collaborative general intelligence” while maintaining AI should be “distributed as widely and equitably as possible,” positioning itself as a potential challenger to established players like OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META).
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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