, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former
OpenAI chief technology officer
Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion in a seed funding round, valuing the six-month-old venture at $10 billion, according to a report by the Financial Times.The deal, led by
Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Conviction Partners (founded by ex-Greylock investor Sarah Guo), is among the largest-ever seed rounds in Silicon Valley’s history — underlining the investor frenzy surrounding AI model companies founded by ex-OpenAI leaders.
Thinking Machines Lab has hired a number of former OpenAI researchers, along with talent from
Meta and French startup
Mistral, to build a next-generation
AI platform aimed at enabling more collaborative human-AI interaction.
Founded in February 2025, the company is led by Murati as CEO and now counts a team of about 30 engineers and researchers, nearly two-thirds of whom are ex-OpenAI employees.
Notably, John Schulman, cofounder of OpenAI and former head of alignment, has joined Thinking Machines Lab as chief scientist, marking his second move in under a year after briefly joining Anthropic in August 2024. Another key hire is Barret Zoph, a researcher who exited OpenAI on the same day as Murati in September 2024.
The venture joins a growing list of AI model companies founded by former OpenAI executives. These include:
The departure of top talent from OpenAI, many of whom were involved in building early versions of GPT, has led to the formation of multiple rival labs, attracting billions of dollars from investors eager to bet on the next wave of general-purpose AI models.
