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Mira Murati’s artificial intelligence start-up has named chip giants Nvidia and AMD among its new investors, as the former OpenAI chief technology officer closes one of the largest initial funding rounds in Silicon Valley history.
Thinking Machines Lab raised $2bn at a $12bn post-money valuation in a “seed” round, previously reported by the Financial Times, despite there being few details about what the company is working on or a product.
Based in San Francisco, the company on Tuesday announced the Andreessen Horowitz-led round, with participation from Nvidia, AMD, Accel and Jane Street.
Since 2020, Jane Street has backed several start-ups, many in AI and decentralised finance. The trading firm is an investor in Anthropic, after buying shares from bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2024.
Thinking Machines has also hired a number of former OpenAI employees, as well as those from other competitors such as Google, Meta and Mistral.
As an executive of OpenAI, Murati, 36, worked on the development of products such as ChatGPT, the Dall-E image generator and its voice mode. She briefly replaced Sam Altman as interim chief executive officer during a board coup in November 2023.
She left the company in September, saying she wanted to “create the time and space to do [her] own exploration”. Previously, Murati was a senior product manager at Tesla, where she contributed to the Model X.
