Mirror Review
July 16, 2025
Summary:
- Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has launched a new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab.
- The company has secured a historic $2 billion in a seed funding round, valuing it at $12 billion. Key investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, and others.
- Mira Murati, along with several other former top researchers from OpenAI, aims to build more understandable, customizable, and collaborative AI systems.
Imagine starting a new company and raising $2 billion before you’ve even launched your first product!
That’s exactly what Mira Murati just did. Her new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has a grand entry in the AI scene with a massive $12 billion valuation.
Mira Murati, the former tech boss at OpenAI, isn’t just making another AI company; she’s marking a new chapter for artificial intelligence!
A Leader with a Proven Track Record
The ongoing excitement around the Thinking Machines Lab starts with its leader.
Mira Murati isn’t just another executive; she has been at the center of the AI revolution. As CTO of OpenAI, she was key in the development of groundbreaking products like ChatGPT and the DALL-E image generator.
Before that, she was a senior product manager at Tesla, where she contributed to the Model X, proving her ability to lead complex, innovative projects.
In 2023, Murati’s leadership was in the global spotlight when she was named interim CEO of OpenAI, which proved her reputation as a steady hand and a key figure in the industry.
But her decision to leave OpenAI in September to “create the time and space to do [her] own exploration” directly led to this new venture, a company built on her vision for AI’s future.
The AI Dream Team
A leader is only as strong as their team, and Murati has assembled an AI dream team.
Her co-founders are some of the most respected minds from OpenAI, each bringing critical expertise to the table:
- John Schulman: A computer scientist who was a key architect behind the technology that powers ChatGPT.
- Barrett Zoph: The former vice president of research at OpenAI. Currently, CTO at Thinking Machines Lab.
- Lilian Weng: An expert who led work on AI safety and robotics.
- Andrew Tulloch & Luke Metz: Specialists who worked on the core technical processes of “pretraining” and “post-training” that are essential for making large language models smart and safe.
This combination of talent, covering everything from foundational research to product safety, is a primary reason why investors are betting so heavily on their success.
This is a team that has already created some of the most widely used AI products and open-source projects in the world.
A Fresh Plan for AI
So what’s their game plan? Murati’s team is taking a different path than many of their competitors.
- Sharing Knowledge:
Instead of keeping their work secret, the company plans to share what they learn by frequently publishing papers and code.
Murati announced that their very first product “will include a significant open source component” to help the entire research community grow.
- AI as a Teammate:
Instead of focusing only on fully autonomous AI, they are excited to build multimodal systems that work with people.
Murati stated, “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”.
- Building on a Solid Base:
The team knows that fancy features don’t matter without a powerful core. They are making model intelligence and top-notch, reliable infrastructure their highest priorities to ensure they build things correctly for the long run.
- Focusing on Real-World Impact:
The ultimate goal is to see how their AI can create “genuine value in the real world”. They believe the biggest breakthroughs come from finding new problems to solve, not just chasing the same old metrics.
The Unmatched Investment
The $2 billion seed round is the largest in history, showcasing the strong investor confidence in Murati’s leadership and the booming AI sector.
Andreessen Horowitz led the round, and it saw participation from chip giants NVIDIA and AMD, who supply the critical hardware for training AI models, alongside other major firms like Accel, Cisco, and Jane Street.
This strong financial backup gives the company a huge opportunity to pursue its ambitious research and product goals without the immediate pressure for revenue that most startups face.
The Thinking Machines investment, therefore, shows a new trend of venture capital’s fierce enthusiasm for AI startups that are led by proven talent.
What’s Next for Thinking Machines Lab?
With a proven leader, a world-class team, and a historic war chest, Thinking Machines Lab is set to dominate the AI wars.
The company is actively hiring engineers and researchers to help bring its vision to life.
Moreover, Murati has already promised that we’ll see their first product “in the next couple months”.
Her vision is clear: AI should be an “extension of individual agency and, in the spirit of freedom, be distributed as widely and equitably as possible”.
By combining deep technical expertise with a commitment to openness and collaboration, Murati’s venture isn’t just another player in the AI game—it’s trying to rewrite the rules.
