Mira Murati’s AI lab is back at the fundraising table. Thinking Machines is in talks to raise $1B at a valuation of at least $40B, The Information reported, with existing backer Accel in line to lead the round. Nvidia, an investor in the company’s record seed, has also discussed joining.
The target marks a comedown from the $50B-plus valuation the lab chased late last year. Those talks collapsed in January when co-founder Barret Zoph returned to OpenAI, and Thinking Machines’ private mark reset to its $12B seed price. Eight months later it is trying again, at a lower number and with an existing investor steering the round.
Thinking Machines closed the largest seed round in AI history in July 2025: $2B at a $12B valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed and Conviction Partners. The company now runs at an annualized revenue run rate above $100M, a figure that makes a $40B price tag look steep even by frontier-lab standards.
The lab’s July launch of Inkling, an open-weight model that charges usage-based compute fees, gave it a revenue engine to point at. Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, took roughly two dozen ex-OpenAI researchers with her when she founded the company in early 2025.
