In one of the most talked-about funding rounds of 2025, Thinking Machines Lab, a fledgling AI startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, has secured $2 billion in funding. Leading the round, Andreessen Horowitz demonstrated immense confidence in Murati’s vision and capabilities. Despite launching only in February 2025 and generating no revenue or commercial products yet, the company now boasts a jaw-dropping $12 billion valuation.
This surge of capital and attention reflects more than a mere market trend. It highlights a fundamental shift in how investors approach artificial intelligence and its pioneers. With a core team comprising nearly two-thirds of former OpenAI employees, Thinking Machines Lab enters the fray with experience, ambition, and a bold roadmap.
Mira Murati: From OpenAI Visionary to AI Pioneer
Mira Murati played a critical role in shaping OpenAI’s trajectory during her time as CTO. Her departure in September 2024 sent ripples across the AI community. Now, less than a year later, she stands at the helm of a startup that has captured the interest of top investors and global tech giants alike.
Murati commands respect in the AI sector not only for her technical prowess but also for her leadership style and strategic clarity. With Thinking Machines, she envisions safer, more versatile AI systems—tools that prioritize reliability and openness over closed, monolithic platforms.
“We’re excited that in the next couple of months we will be able to share our first product,” Murati posted on X (formerly Twitter). “It will include a significant open-source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom models.”
The Investment Frenzy: Who Backed Thinking Machines?
This wasn’t just any VC round. The capital influx drew heavyweight investors, both from Silicon Valley and the broader tech ecosystem. Alongside Andreessen Horowitz, the funding list included:
- Nvidia – the current epicenter of AI hardware innovation
- Accel – a seasoned backer of transformative startups
- ServiceNow – pushing into enterprise AI
- Cisco – aligning its network technologies with AI growth
- AMD – seeking to integrate more deeply into AI chip ecosystems
- Jane Street – the quantitative trading firm known for investing in AI talent
This mix of financial firms, chipmakers, and enterprise tech companies signals widespread belief in Thinking Machines’ potential to shape the future of AI.
No Revenue? No Problem.
In traditional industries, raising billions without a product might trigger alarm. But in the current AI landscape, talent trumps track record. Investors now focus more on “who” is building, rather than “what” has already been built. With Mira Murati at the top and a powerhouse team of ex-OpenAI engineers behind her, Thinking Machines gained credibility from day one.
By comparison, Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, followed a similar trajectory. The company raised billions before launching Claude. Likewise, Safe Superintelligence, Ilya Sutskever’s new venture, has also drawn massive interest—despite revealing few technical specifics. Thinking Machines fits this mold of “pre-product billionaires”, where pedigree and promise drive capital inflow.
OpenAI’s Brain Drain: A Growing Pattern
Thinking Machines isn’t the only startup capitalizing on the OpenAI diaspora. As top researchers and executives split off to pursue divergent philosophies or internal disagreements, they take with them deep institutional knowledge and technical mastery. Murati’s new venture absorbed much of this talent, making it both a spiritual successor and a potential competitor to OpenAI.
This growing exodus speaks to a broader trend in the AI space: decentralization of talent. Visionaries no longer remain tied to single institutions. They build new companies based on nuanced views about safety, openness, control, and the ethical trajectory of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
A New Kind of AI Startup: Open, Safe, and Useful
Murati’s vision doesn’t just replicate OpenAI’s path—it deviates from it. Thinking Machines aims to build systems that lean into open-source components, allowing researchers and startups to experiment freely. This direction contrasts sharply with the recent pivot among major AI players toward closed, proprietary models.
By emphasizing safety and utility across diverse applications, Murati targets more than just consumer-facing chatbots or enterprise copilots. She wants to embed AI deeper into scientific research, biotechnology, climate modeling, and even education. Her leadership team understands both the power and pitfalls of large-scale AI and now seeks to optimize for long-term value over short-term hype.
The First Product: What to Expect
While Thinking Machines has yet to announce product details, insiders expect a modular AI framework or model suite that combines:
- High performance for custom applications
- Open-source infrastructure for research transparency
- Safety tools for guardrailing outputs
- Scalability across cloud and edge devices
If Thinking Machines delivers on these fronts, it could bridge the widening gap between open-access research tools like Meta’s LLaMA models and closed commercial offerings like GPT-4 or Claude.
Murati promises that the initial release will “empower developers and researchers” instead of locking them into proprietary silos. This could shift the landscape, especially for startups priced out of large-scale proprietary models.
Industry Impact: Signal or Outlier?
Thinking Machines now joins the top tier of AI startups by valuation. But more than that, it signals a deeper transformation within the industry. Investors no longer wait for traction. They chase vision and teams. Talent now moves fast, and capital moves faster.
By betting on Murati and her team, Andreessen Horowitz and the rest have signaled one of two possibilities:
- Either they expect Thinking Machines to launch a truly disruptive AI platform, or
- They hope to lock in early ownership before the startup becomes an acquisition target for a major player like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon.
In either scenario, Murati holds the cards—and the expectations are sky-high.
Conclusion: Murati’s Moonshot
Thinking Machines Lab didn’t wait years to prove its worth. It did it in months—without revenue, without a product, and without compromise. Backed by billions and built by some of the sharpest minds in AI, the startup stands poised to challenge giants, redefine AI development, and possibly set new norms for safety and openness in artificial intelligence.
Mira Murati stepped away from one of the most influential AI companies in the world to build something new. Investors, collaborators, and onlookers believe she’s onto something big.
The world now waits for her next move.
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