Thinking Machines

thinkingmachines.ai ↗added 2026-09-02

★ One of the largest seed rounds ever ($2B at $12B post) with no product or revenue proof — a pure bet on the team and Mira Murati's OpenAI pedigree

Worth-Joining Index · Scorecard

v2.1 ALPHA · 2026-08

Career Score

—/100

Coverage

51%

Verified

17%

Stage cohort

Early

Vibe Check

🎪 community voting coming soon

Momentum

4/4

Efficiency

unknown

Backing

8/8

Market

7.7/11

Product

4.4/11

Upside

2/8

See all rankings →Methodology →Company or employee? Correct the data →

Latest valuation

$12B (Seed, 2025-07)

In talks · 2025-11

Total raised

$2B (Seed, 2025-07)

as of 2025-07

AI研究基础模型开发者工具Founded · 2025Stage · Growth (mega seed → new round)

Traction · Key numbers

Valuation paceSeed at $12B (Jul 2025) → reportedly in talks at $50B (Nov 2025), 4x+ in 4 months✓ Publicly verifiable ↗as of 2025-11

Round size$2B seed led by a16z, with Nvidia, AMD, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco✓ Publicly verifiable ↗as of 2025-07

Funding

Total raised

$2B (Seed, 2025-07)

Rounds

Valuation pace

Valuation reportedly moving from $12B to ~$50B within about 7 months

•

In talks · 2025-11 · led by Andreessen Horowitz

Per Bloomberg, in early talks at a valuation over 4x the July round; not yet confirmed closed

$2B

Seed · 2025-07 · valuation $12B post · led by Andreessen Horowitz

With: Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, Jane Street · One of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history

▸One of the largest seed rounds ever ($2B at $12B post) with no product or revenue proof — a pure bet on the team and Mira Murati's OpenAI pedigree

▸Valuation talk moved from $12B to $50B in about 4 months, faster than most frontier labs, showing continued willingness to write outsized checks for ex-OpenAI leadership

▸Investor roster spans cloud/chip vendors (Nvidia, AMD) and enterprise software (ServiceNow, Cisco) — strategic placements that likely double as compute/customer alignment

Founders

Mira Murati CEO

Former OpenAI CTO, led work on ChatGPT, DALL-E and Codex

John Schulman Chief Scientist

OpenAI co-founder, briefly joined Anthropic to focus on AI alignment

Barret Zoph CTO (departed)

Former VP of Research (post-training) at OpenAI; left to return to OpenAI in early 2026

Reality · Working here

H1B / PERMUnknown

Remote policyUnknown

Comp modelUnknown

GlassdoorUnknown — work here? Help us fill this in →

Equity liquidityUnknown

Hiring statusUnknown

Signals & Risks

CompetitorsOpenAIAnthropicMistral

ValuationValuation reportedly jumped from $12B to $50B in under a year with no disclosed revenue proof point, a very high expectations gap

Key-personCTO Barret Zoph and researcher Luke Metz returned to OpenAI in early 2026, raising founding-team stability concerns

CommercializationEarly products (Tinker, Inkling) skew toward research/open-weights; a scalable commercial model is not yet evident

Editorial ✎

Good fit for

· Top research scientists/engineers who want to do foundation-model research without near-term product pressure and buy into Mira Murati's vision

· Candidates who can tolerate very high uncertainty and value resume/prestige over near-term equity liquidity

· People genuinely interested in the RL/open-weights direction (Tinker/Inkling), not just chasing an ex-OpenAI halo

Not for

· Anyone who needs a clear product roadmap and commercialization timeline — there's no visible revenue story yet

· Anyone who prioritizes team stability — key people (Barret Zoph, Luke Metz) have already returned to OpenAI, so retention is not a given

Ask in the interview

1. Who is actually paying for Tinker/Inkling, and what's the path to revenue? Any paying customers today?

2. What really drove Barret Zoph and Luke Metz's departures, and what's recent retention like?

3. Valuation talk 4x'd in months — how is the company managing expectations, and where is this capital actually going (compute vs hiring vs something else)?

Data changelog

Community corrections → editorial review → applied, fully on the record

2026-09-02

最近一轮领投机构 filled in as Andreessen Horowitz

data as of 2025-07 · Source: TechCrunch ↗

✓ Publicly verifiable ↗

2026-09-02

最近一轮估值 filled in as $12B post (Seed, 2025-07)

data as of 2025-07 · Source: TechCrunch ↗

✓ Publicly verifiable ↗

2026-09-02

累计融资额 filled in as $2B (Seed, 2025-07)

data as of 2025-07 · Source: TechCrunch ↗

✓ Publicly verifiable ↗

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