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AI Startup Thinking Machines Lab Raises $2bn to Build Safer, Multimodal AI
Thinking Machines Lab has secured $2 billion in fresh capital, reinforcing investor confidence in frontier artificial intelligence. The funding round, which places the company’s valuation at $12 billion, comes amid rising enthusiasm for new AI startups despite broader concerns about tech-sector spending. Backed by notable firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Accel, and AMD, the startup is expected to unveil its first product within the next few months. Thinking Machines Lab is led by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, who aims to build AI that reflects natural human interaction.
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Former OpenAI Leaders at the Helm
Founded in February 2025, Thinking Machines Lab entered the scene with an experienced team, nearly two-thirds of whom are former OpenAI employees. Mira Murati, the company’s founder and CEO, confirmed the funding via a post on X, formerly Twitter. In her message, she stated that the company is working on “multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world — through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate.”
According to Murati, the startup’s first product will include a significant open-source component and will be geared towards researchers and startups building custom models. She also indicated that the company intends to release scientific research to help the broader AI community understand and improve frontier systems. The initiative highlights the lab’s mission to prioritize safety and reliability in its AI offerings.
The founding team’s pedigree and focus on multimodal systems — those that combine visual, auditory, and textual data — place it in direct competition with leading players in the generative AI space. By aiming for broader applicability and trustworthiness, Thinking Machines Lab appears to be carving out a distinct lane in a fast-moving sector.
Backed by Industry Giants
This round of financing was spearheaded by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and included contributions by other heavy participants in the tech industry, including Nvidia, ServiceNow, Accel, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street. Such an investor portfolio is a mark of robust institutional confidence in the vision of a startup and its ability to provide effective AI solutions.
Their support also suggests the same about the sector bout. The field of artificial intelligence is in its infancy and yet still it received billions of investment dollars even as the market is volatile at this point and the debate roars over the value of sustainable technologies. In the top half of 2025, 64.1 percent of the U.S. startup funding environment deal value was AI-related (according to Pitchbook data reported by Reuters). The amount of startup funding grew by 76% over the previous year up to 162.8 billion dollars.
The Thinking Machines Lab entry is following closely on the heels of Elon Musk xAI which raised a combined debt-and-equity capital of $10 billion to fast track its AI development. This further proves the competitive arms race between mushrooming startups financed to make breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence and enterprise-grade applications.
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Preparing for Launch
The company has not yet provided the detailed product specification but the information on its public roadmap is that its initial product will have two purposes, on the one hand, it will provide researchers with an opportunity to experiment with AI, and on the other hand, provide startups with the opportunity to construct their own custom models. The fact that the product would contain open-source components means that it helps to increase the demand of transparency and cooperation, particularly in the context in which the AI systems are powerful and developed safely.
Murati stated the product would go on the market in the next couple months, meaning that it is due soon. Simultaneously, the lab is about to publish its underlying scientific studies in order to assist scientists whose works are associated with the investigation of mechanics and dangers of a strong AI system. Both these directions the startup takes by presenting practical tools and publishing publicly funded research are results of its focus on safety, openness, and the impact.
Thinking Machines Lab addresses the mounting concerns regarding large AI models training, test, and implementation by designing systems that focus on making them safer and more reliable. The trend of the firm can also be seen as resembling a wider industrial change towards developing AI that is more easily integrated into natural human behavior and into actual work processes.
The rapid development and a solid financial support of Thinking Machines Lab are indicative of the growth in competitive pressures in the field of AI. And as its products go live and its investors include some of the best in the business, the company is under close scrutiny as being a possible leader in the next generation of artificial intelligence.
