Meet the former OpenAI CTO who’s steering Thinking Machines to a $50 billion valuation
In less than a year, Mira Murati has transformed what was once an ambitious vision into one of the most closely watched startups in artificial intelligence.
Founded in early 2025, Thinking Machines Lab, headquartered in San Francisco, is nearing a funding round that could value the company at a staggering $50 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday— a leap that underscores both the founder’s reputation and the intense market appetite for AI innovation.
Murati’s journey to this point is tightly woven with her years at OpenAI, where she served as chief technology officer before departing in late 2024. Bringing together a constellation of AI experts—many hailing from OpenAI itself—she quickly assembled a high-caliber team including names like John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Lilian Weng, Andrew Tulloch, and Luke Metz. This ‘dream team’ laid the foundation for a startup designed to push the boundaries of AI research and commercialization.
Launching publicly in February 2025, the company caught immediate attention with an outsized seed round, reportedly totaling around $2 billion by mid-year. Venture firms and industry giants alike—Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, and Cisco among them—backed the raise enthusiastically, valuing the company at $10–12 billion.
However, the rise of Thinking Machines is playing out amid heightened concern about inflated valuations in the AI startup space. The market is abuzz with ‘AI bubble’ fears, stirred by massive funding rounds and rapid increases in spending by big tech giants such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta.
The $50 billion valuation talks, still in early stages, place extraordinary expectations on Murati and her company to not only innovate but also demonstrate strong product-market fit and sustainable revenue growth.
