Can you ever imagine the Avengers ditching their superpowers with their old team to rebrand themselves into technical experts and raise billions of dollars in funding? This is a true story about OpenAI executive Mira Murati, who, along with her former colleagues, and then founded Thinking Machines. On July 15, Thinking Machines announced that it had raised a total of $2 billion seed round, making it the largest early-stage funding in the history of Silicon Valley.
Today, we shall be taking a deeper look into the formation and funding of Thinking Labs and how this $12 billion valuation becomes a vision for multimodal AI and a game changer. Mira Murati had a vision and passion to make artificial intelligence broadly available and make it more useful for practical applications and open science.
The Birth of Thinking Machines: Open AI to Open Ambition
Mira Murati was the former Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI and soon stepped down from the role in the year 2023 and announced her new journey in 2024. Her cofounders include John Schulman, who was one of the brightest and key minds behind ChatGPT, Barrett Zoph, who was the former Vice President of research at OpenAI, Lilian Weng, who is renowned for robotics and artificial intelligence safety, Andrew Tullo, ch who helped with training and reasoning, and Luke Metz, who is specialized in post-training. Just a year after Thinking Machines was founded, it started to make headlines with the $2 billion seed funding.
This news was first mentioned by the Financial Times in June 2025, but Mira Murati and her team remained silent about their products and plans until now. On July 15, Mira Murati mentioned on X, formerly Twitter, that Thinking Machines is planning to release its first product soon and promised that it would include a very well-known open-source component. Mira Murati further said, “The goal is very simple. It is to advance AI by making it more useful and understandable by giving solid foundations, open science, and more practical applications.”
Who Has Invested in Thinking Machines
Thinking Machines is no doubt making headlines with the $2 billion bet. However, a question that arises in everyone’s mind is Who is investing in Thinking Machines? Many well-known companies like Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Cisco, AMD, and Accel have bet big on Thinking Machines. This shows that Mira Murati and her founding team have left an indelible mark on these big companies, and they are all rooting for the next AI breakthrough.
Andreessen Horowitz made the largest seed round in history with a valuation of $12 billion. Nvidia, being the leading provider of AI chips, has also invested and bet on Thinking Machines. According to a report by Mergermarket, deals related to AI also rose by 53% with an increase of 730% value compared to 2019, implying that Thinking Machines is not just another startup but a front-runner in the race of AI.
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What is Multimodal AI of Thinking Machines
By now, we have a clear idea of Thinking Machines and where it is mainly focusing, and that is multimodal AI. It is a type of artificial intelligence that can engage all formats, including texts, images, video, and audio and interact like a human. Mira Murati had a vision to create an AI model that can interact with human beings just like they do in real life and make the conversation seem more human-like.
Unlike traditional AI models, multimodal AI can read and understand facial expressions, tone of the message or text, and analyse the video while generating a response simultaneously. It is more suitable for creative fields, research, robotics, and even the educational domain, and therefore, Murati is mainly focusing on its accessibility and practical applications. Thinking Machines is not hyping the multimodal AI as a superhuman AI, but it is making clear signs that it is the next big thing in artificial intelligence.
All Eyes on Thinking Machines and Its Upcoming Products
Everyone in the industry is watching Mira Murati and her cofounders closely to understand how they are emerging with the next breakthrough of AI. People are mostly rooting for the former OpenAI executive, Mira Murati, and her brilliant team of experts, and their bold move to create Thinking Machines. It is not surprising that the company has gained serious attention from all industries, including the media and investors. Samuel Kerr, who is the head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, mentioned that “We are going to start to have big winners start to acquire different technologies rather than doing in-house.”
The Road Forward with Partnerships and Open Science
In Murati’s words, we will soon witness the first product of the company, which is going to have open-source elements and serve researchers and startups to make custom models. Since it is backed by companies like Nvidia and Andreessen Horowitz, the startup by Murati is surely going to make headlines in the coming months with their launch of the first-ever product. It will be wonderful to see how they will maintain their popularity and emerge as a competitor in the race.
