Mira Murati's AI start-up seeks $5B funding at $50B valuation
What's the story
Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in talks with investors to raise about $5 billion in its next funding round, according to The Information. The target would more than triple the capital the company has secured to date. The start-up is aiming for a valuation of at least $50 billion as it scales its product and research ambitions. This is significant jump from its last estimated worth of $12 billion in July.
Valuation details
AI 'neolabs' attract growing investor interest
The fundraising push comes as investors increasingly back "neolabs," or research-intensive AI start-ups exploring alternative approaches to model development. Such companies argue that major AI firms may be overlooking promising techniques. Thinking Machines, which has only recently begun releasing products, faces high expectations as it positions itself within this fast-growing segment. The company is expected to use new financing to hire additional AI researchers and expand its compute infrastructure to support the training and deployment of its large-scale models.
Product launch
Product roadmap centers on custom AI models
The news of the funding talks comes after a recent report from The Wall Street Journal that Andrew Tulloch, one of the company's co-founders, had left Thinking Machines to join Meta Platforms. Despite this setback, the company has continued its work in AI. In October, the company launched Tinker, an API enabling developers to finetune open-source models. Murati has told investors that Thinking Machines aims to build models tailored to a company's performance indicators or business metrics.