Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, has secured $2 million in fresh funding, pushing its valuation to a remarkable $12 billion—despite not yet having released a product or reported any revenue.
The funding round was spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz, with prominent backing from Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street. Founded in February 2025, the company has drawn widespread attention due to Murati’s leadership and its team composition—two-thirds of whom are alumni of OpenAI.
While the startup remains in stealth mode, Murati revealed that the debut product, expected to be introduced in the coming months, will feature a robust open-source component aimed at supporting researchers and startups looking to develop customized AI models.
“The company’s first product will include a significant open-source component designed to benefit researchers and startups developing custom models,” Murati said.
Thinking Machines Lab is positioning itself to build safer, more generalizable, and trustworthy AI systems, offering an alternative to existing platforms in a fast-evolving market.
The outsized investment underscores the sustained investor confidence in AI innovation, even as broader tech spending is under tighter scrutiny. According to Pitchbook, funding for U.S. startups hit $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, marking a 76% increase year-on-year, with AI startups accounting for over 64% of the total deal value.
Murati now joins a notable group of former OpenAI leaders—including Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Ilya Sutskever (Safe Superintelligence Inc.)—who are driving the development of the next wave of frontier AI platforms.
