Ex-OpenAI Tech Chief Raises $2 Billion for New AI Startup

The artificial intelligence (AI) firm reached that valuation following a $2 billion funding deal, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (June 20).

The recently closed deal was one of the biggest seed funding rounds in the history of Silicon Valley, the report added, citing sources familiar with the matter. 

Those sources said that Thinking Machine has not revealed much about its efforts, but has used the name and reputation of former OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati to woo investors.

Murati stepped down from her role at OpenAI in September, and announced the launch of Thinking Machine in February.

“Our goal is simple, advance AI by making it broadly useful and understandable through solid foundations, open science and practical applications,” Murati said at the time.

According to the FT, sources say Murati was one of the executives who flagged concerns about the leadership of CEO Sam Altman ahead of his short-lived removal in 2023. She served as interim CEO for a brief time before Altman was restored to the chief executive role.

Murati also played a critical role in rolling out products like ChatGPT and DALL-E, PYMNTS wrote last fall.

The news comes as a number of other former OpenAI executives are launching their own startups in the AI field.

As covered here earlier this month, this group includes Periodic Labs, founded by former OpenAI vice president of research for post-training, Liam Fedus. There is also Safe Superintelligence, founded by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, which has raised billions of dollars for its AI research lab.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the transition of AI from “a buzzy experiment” to a critical piece of back-office infrastructure.

As that report noted, there was a time when enterprise AI initiatives tended to be weighed down by vague objectives, data silos, a lack of talent, and fragmented — if promising — technology.

“Fast forward to today, and the application of AI technologies, particularly those described as ‘generative’ or ‘agentic,’ is neither following the trajectory of unchecked enthusiasm nor stalling under the weight of its own complexity. Rather, it is unfolding incrementally and through the calibration of capability against operational necessity.”