Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in discussions to raise $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion. Existing investor Accel is in talks to lead the round, according to reporting from The Information and TechCrunch.
If completed at that valuation, the financing would more than triple Thinking Machines’ previous $12 billion valuation. The company had reportedly explored a valuation of around $50 billion late last year, meaning the current discussions would come in below that level.
Revenue Run Rate Surpasses $100 Million
Thinking Machines has reached an annual revenue run rate of more than $100 million, according to a source familiar with its financials. A $40 billion valuation would therefore represent a revenue multiple of roughly 400 times the current run rate.
The company has not publicly confirmed the fundraising discussions, and neither Thinking Machines nor Accel immediately responded to requests for comment.
Thinking Machines previously raised $2 billion in one of the largest seed rounds recorded for a startup. The financing valued the company at $12 billion and was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from investors including Nvidia, Accel, GV, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners.
Inkling and Tinker Form the Company’s Commercial Platform
In July, Thinking Machines released Inkling, an open-weight model designed for reasoning, coding, tool use, and multimodal tasks. The company also offers Tinker, a managed platform that lets customers fine-tune open models using their own data while Thinking Machines handles the underlying training infrastructure.
Thinking Machines generates revenue from usage-based compute fees when customers customize models through Tinker. Inkling itself is available with open weights and can also be adapted through the platform.
The company has also expanded its infrastructure relationship with Nvidia. In March, Thinking Machines announced a multi-year partnership with Nvidia to deploy at least one gigawatt of next-generation Vera Rubin systems for model training and serving.
Thinking Machines has experienced several senior departures since its earlier fundraise. Some former researchers and co-founders, including Lilian Weng and Luke Metz, have since returned to OpenAI.
The proposed new financing would come little more than a year after Murati founded Thinking Machines and would place the company among the most highly valued private AI labs despite its relatively short operating history.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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