Accel in talks to lead a funding round of 1 billion dollars for Thinking Machines at a valuation of 40 billion dollars
Thinking Machines, the lab founded by Mira Murati, is in talks for a funding round of 1 billion dollars at a valuation of at least 40 billion dollars, led by Accel. This is a lower valuation than the 50 billion dollars the company originally sought.
Thinking Machines, the lab founded last year by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in talks to raise a funding round of 1 billion dollars at a valuation of at least 40 billion dollars. According to a report from The Information cited by TechCrunch on Thursday, existing investor Accel is in talks to lead this funding round. Neither Accel nor Thinking Machines has yet responded to a request for comment.
The new valuation would be lower than the 50 billion dollars that Thinking Machines reportedly sought late last year. The annual revenue run rate of the company exceeds 100 million dollars, according to a source familiar with its finances; at this revenue level, a valuation of 40 billion dollars represents an exceptionally high revenue multiple.
In July, Thinking Machines introduced Inkling, an open-weight model that generates revenue through usage-based compute fees charged when adapting models to proprietary data on the Tinker platform. The previous funding round of 2 billion dollars, one of the largest seed rounds in history, valued the company at 12 billion dollars; it was led by Andreessen Horowitz alongside Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed and Conviction Partners. At the time, investors were betting primarily on the reputation of Murati and the former OpenAI researchers who joined her. Since then, the company has seen several significant departures, including co-founders Lilian Weng and Luke Metz, who returned to OpenAI.
Why it matters
The case shows that even leading AI labs with revenues of around 100 million dollars a year can achieve valuations in the tens of billions of dollars based on the reputation of their founders and teams rather than financial metrics, signaling continued willingness among investors to bet on AI talent even after key co-founders return to OpenAI.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For a business
High valuations for AI startups without a publicly released product of comparable scale show how investors value teams and technology on a forward-looking basis; companies considering investments or partnerships in the AI sector can use this as a reference point for their own valuation negotiations.
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