TLDR: Mira Murati, former Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI and a key figure in ChatGPT’s development, has launched a new artificial intelligence startup named Thinking Machines Lab. The company recently secured a substantial $2 billion in seed funding, pushing its valuation to an impressive $12 billion. Its first product, ‘Tinker,’ aims to democratize the creation of custom frontier AI models, making advanced AI capabilities accessible to a broader audience beyond large corporations.
Mira Murati, a prominent figure in the artificial intelligence landscape and former Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, has made a significant re-entry into the AI sector with the launch of her new venture, Thinking Machines Lab. The startup has rapidly garnered attention, securing a remarkable $2 billion in seed funding, which has propelled its valuation to an estimated $12 billion. This substantial investment round saw participation from major industry players including Nvidia, AMD, Jane Street, and was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Thinking Machines Lab’s core mission revolves around building ‘multimodal’ AI systems designed for collaborative interaction with users, aiming to make AI more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable. Murati, who played a pivotal role in the development of ChatGPT during her six-year tenure at OpenAI and briefly served as its interim CEO in 2023, has assembled a formidable team for her new company. The roster includes other OpenAI veterans such as co-founder John Schulman, former CTO Barrett Zoph, and top engineers from leading AI labs like Google DeepMind and Character AI.
The startup’s inaugural product, ‘Tinker,’ was unveiled in early October 2025. Tinker is described as a revolutionary AI tool that empowers individuals, from researchers and small businesses to hobbyists, to create their own custom frontier AI models. This platform aims to simplify and automate the complex processes typically required for fine-tuning AI models, such as Meta’s Llama and Alibaba’s Qwen, through an easy-to-use API. The vision behind Tinker is to democratize AI development, shifting the paradigm from a few large companies controlling advanced AI capabilities to thousands of individuals building specialized models.
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Thinking Machines Lab emphasizes a commitment to ‘open collaboration,’ with plans to regularly publish technical blog posts, scientific papers, and code to contribute to the broader AI community’s understanding of frontier systems. This approach, championed by Murati, suggests a belief that widespread participation in AI research and development will lead to an explosion of innovation. The company’s rapid rise and significant funding underscore the continued investor confidence in Murati’s leadership and the potential for her new venture to be a major player in the evolving AI space.
