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Mira Murati, former Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, has raised a staggering USD 2 billion for her newly founded AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, marking one of the most significant funding rounds in 2025. The startup is now valued at USD 12 billion, despite not having launched a product or generated any revenue yet.
The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. Major tech and finance giants also joined, including Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street.
The large investment shows strong interest in generative AI. It also reflects growing confidence in Murati’s leadership. This comes despite concerns over rising tech sector spending.
Murati shared on X that the company will unveil its first product within the next few months, stating:
“We’re excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model.”
This upcoming release is expected to combine open-source accessibility with powerful tools aimed at startups and AI researchers focused on custom model development.
Thinking Machines aims to develop AI systems that are not just powerful, but also “safer, more reliable”, and suited for wider application than many current alternatives. At launch, around two-thirds of its team comprised former OpenAI employees, indicating a notable talent shift within the AI industry.
Murati is the latest in a series of former OpenAI leaders branching out with their own ventures. Others include Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Ilya Sutskever (Safe Superintelligence), both of whom have also attracted substantial funding and assembled teams of high-level AI researchers.
According to data from Pitchbook, U.S. startup funding surged 76% in the first half of 2025, reaching USD 162.8 billion. Significantly, AI-related investments accounted for more than 64% of that total, underscoring the sector’s dominance in current innovation trends.
