Superintelligence & frontier generalists · San Francisco, US · founded 2025
Thinking Machines Lab: who founded it, who funds it
Thinking Machines Lab is a San Francisco superintelligence lab founded in 2025 by Mira Murati, John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Lilian Weng and 2 others, who came from OpenAI and Meta. What it is building: frontier multimodal models built around human collaboration; open research and a managed fine-tuning API. It has raised $2B in disclosed rounds, most recently a Seed of $2B at a $12B valuation in July 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz. It sells access through an API.
- Founders
- Mira Murati (ex-OpenAI), John Schulman (ex-OpenAI), Barret Zoph (ex-OpenAI), Lilian Weng (ex-OpenAI), Andrew Tulloch (ex-Meta), Soumith Chintala (ex-Meta)
- Founders from
- ex-OpenAI, ex-Meta
- Location
- San Francisco, US (North America)
- Valuation
- $12B set by the last priced round
- Raised
- $2B disclosed
- Investors
- Andreessen Horowitz lead, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel, ServiceNow, Jane Street
- What ships
- Tinker fine-tuning API, generally available 12 Dec 2025; Inkling open-weight model (Jul 2026).
- In talks
- $1B at $40B Sep 3, 2026, Accel. Nvidia weighing ~$2.5B; a $50-60B round collapsed in Jan 2026 source
Rounds
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 2025 | Seed | $2B | $12B | Andreessen Horowitz | builtinsf.com |
Sources
- Tinker general availability thinkingmachines.ai
- Valuation history valueaddvc.com
News
- Sep 25, 2026
- Sep 18, 2026
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Sep 9, 2026
+1 more coverage
- Commercial Observer AI Startup Thinking Machines Lab Takes 22K SF at 79 Fifth Avenue for First NYC Office
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Sep 3, 2026
+2 more coverage
- Yahoo Finance Thinking Machines Lab Seeks $40B Valuation as Nvidia Extends Its Capital Allocator Role I…
- Yahoo Finance Thinking Machines Lab seeks $1b raise at $40b valuation - report
- Sep 3, 2026
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Aug 16, 2026
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Aug 11, 2026
- Jul 31, 2026
- Jul 21, 2026
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Jul 15, 2026
+1 more coverage
- WIRED Thinking Machines Lab Drops Its First Model
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May 21, 2026
- Jan 21, 2026
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Dec 12, 2025
- Jun 23, 2025
Investors who back other labs here
- Nvidia also: Safe Superintelligence, Reflection AI, Skild AI, Poolside
- Andreessen Horowitz also: Safe Superintelligence, TypeSafe AI, World Labs, Luma AI
- AMD also: Hark, World Labs, Recursive Superintelligence, Luma AI
- Jane Street also: Magic
- Accel also: Periodic Labs
- Cisco also: World Labs
Same research area
- Safe Superintelligence $32B · Palo Alto, US