Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former Openai Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, officially shut down its $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Monday, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The deal, which includes participation from Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street, values the startup at $12 billion, the spokesman said.
In June, Thinking Machines Lab reported that it was close to closing this $2 billion funding at a $10 billion valuation, but apparently the valuation appeared to have occurred last month.
The deal is one of the largest seed rounds or first funding rounds in Silicon Valley history, representing the desire of large investors to back up a promising new AI lab. Thinking Machines Lab is under a year and has not yet revealed it is working.
However, Murati has stripped the curtains of the company’s first product a bit in Tuesday’s X post, claiming that the startup will announce work in the “next few months,” including “a critical open source offering.” Murati also said the product will be useful for researchers and startups building custom AI models.
“Now we will share the best sciences to help the research community better understand frontier AI systems,” Murati said.
It is unclear whether Murati means Thinking Machines Lab will release open AI models, as some of Openai’s other competitors have done to undercut ChatGpt manufacturers’ products. A spokesman for Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment further.
Since Murati launched the venture, Thinking Machines Lab has attracted some of his former Openai colleagues, including John Schulman, Barret Zoph and Luke Metz. According to the startup website, Murati says her company is currently trying to serve on staff, especially for those with a track record of “building successful AI-driven products from scratch.”
Meta reportedly has held discussions in recent months to acquire the Thinking Machinery Lab to bolster over-effort, but has not made its way into the final offer.
Thinking Machines Lab is one of the AI startups that investors believe are legitimate threats to today’s leading AI model developers, including Openai, Anthropic, and Google Deepmind.
With billions of people in funding, Murati may have enough war chests to train frontier AI models. Thinking Machines Lab previously signed a deal with Google Cloud to enhance its AI model.
Certainly, Thinking Machines Lab has a tough fight to keep up with other AI labs. To make it stand out, there is a possibility that banking banks will be in a breakthrough in new research. However, it is an increasingly challenging task, including investing billions in meta, Google’s deep mind, humanity, and its own research team.
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