Ex-Openai-CTO gets 2 billion-for AI startup without a specific product

Mira Murati is said to have secured $ 2 billion for her new Ki startup-with a focus on AGI and a team of Openai veterans.

In September 2024, Mira Murati announced to leave Openai. In her message to the employees, it was said that she wanted to devote herself to her own research.

She was part of Openaai for over six years, and the past two and a half years led her as CTO the technical product developments for Chatgpt and the image generator Dall-E.

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After Altman's short-term discharge in 2023, Murati had temporarily taken over the CEO position. She was also referred to as the “Minister of Truth” by Openaai because she campaigned for the company's AI products to be not misleading or biased.

Billion -dollar financing just six months after the establishment

Only shortly after her resignation she founded her own Ki startup, Thinking Machines Lab. In June, the Financial Times (FT) already reported that it is said to have collected around 1.7 billion euros ($ 2 billion) in a seed round, for an assessment of 8.7 billion euros ($ 10 billion).

Now Murati has confirmed the financing himself on X. The 2 billion round was led by A16Z. Nvidia, Accel, Serviceenow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street also took part, according to their post.

That was one of the largest seed financing rounds in the history of Silicon Valley, insider told the FT.

In the past few weeks, the evaluation is said to have increased significantly again – over ten billion euros (twelve billion dollars). This was confirmed by a speaker from Thinking Machine's Lab compared to Techcrunch.

No concrete product

At the time of seed financing, the startup has only been in existence for six months and there is hardly any information about the product or the future plans.

Murati now gave the upcoming product of Thinking Machines Lab on x. This is to be presented in the next few months and contain an essential open source share, it is said. The aim is to offer researchers and startups a useful basis for developing their own AI models.

In addition, Murati announced that the company would soon also publish its scientific knowledge in order to enable the research community to understand modern AI systems better.

Thinking Machines Lab Website

Former Openai employees followed Murati

According to FT, the seed investors primarily rely on Muratis call-it was significantly involved in the development of chatt, dall-e and voice mode. Other investors are said to have rejected an investment because there was no information about the product or business model, according to FT.

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Murati was able to get top-class ex-Openai employees on board. This is how her Openai co-founder John Schulman, the former Head of Special Projects Jonathan Lachman and the two ex-VPS Barret Zoph and Lilian little to follow Thinking Machines Lab.

Something with AI

According to FT insider information, Thinking Machines Lab is working on “Artificial General Intelligence”-that is, systems that are comparable or superior to human intelligence. The company only vaguely said in February that Ki wanted to make a “understandable, more customizable and generally capable”, the article says.

The startup should have an unusual governance structure. According to the structure of the financing, Murati is said to have more voting rights than all other board members-it has the last word for all important decisions.

Thinking Machines Lab rejected a statement to FT, it is said.