Former OpenAI CTO's new startup now valued at $10 billion: report
OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati has secured $2 billion in seed funding for her new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, valuing the six-month-old company at $10 billion, according to a recent report by Financial Times.
The massive funding round marks one of Silicon Valley's largest-ever seed investments, demonstrating continued investor frenzy around AI despite the startup's secretive nature, adds the report.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. As per the report, San Francisco-based Thinking Machines has not disclosed its specific product plans, instead leveraging Murati's reputation as a key architect behind OpenAI's ChatGPT and Dall-E to attract major backers. Andreessen Horowitz led the investment, with participation from Sarah Guo's Conviction Partners, sources familiar with the deal told Financial Times.
The 36-year-old Murati, who briefly served as OpenAI's interim CEO during Sam Altman's November 2023 ouster incident, has assembled a team of former OpenAI talent including co-founder John Schulman and several other executives. "There's a real finite group of founders, and incredibly smart people," one investor said, according to the report, "The team [Murati has] pulled together is compelling."
While Thinking Machines' February statement mentioned making "AI systems more widely understood, customisable and generally capable", investors told Financial Times that Murati's pitch offered scant details about actual products or financial plans. Some venture firms reportedly passed on the opportunity due to this lack of transparency. One source suggested the company is working toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), though added the team is still "strategising".
The funding comes with an unusual governance structure - Murati will retain board voting rights that outweigh all other directors combined, ensuring her final say on critical decisions, according to the report. This follows a similar pattern to other ex-OpenAI founders' ventures, including co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's $2 billion raise in April for his Safe Superintelligence startup despite having no product.
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