Thinking Machines Lab Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) startup led by Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI. The company was founded in February 2025, and by May it was reported that it "could be valued at $10 billion [...] making it one of the most valuable AI startups in the world". The company is based in San Francisco and structured as a public benefit corporation.
The company aims "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable", with an emphasis on collective research culture, human-AI collaboration, model intelligence, and research and product co-design.
History.
By its launch in February 2025, Thinking Machines Lab was reported to have hired about 30 researchers and engineers from competitors including OpenAI, Meta AI, and Mistral AI. Its founding team members include OpenAI cofounder John Schulman, who joined after a brief stint at the lab's competitor Anthropic. Other former OpenAI employees who have been hired include Jonathan Lachman and Barret Zoph. Thinking Machines Lab's advisers include Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, who was a lead researcher on many of OpenAI's flagship models.
Business structure.
Thinking Machines Lab follows a governance structure wherein Mira Murati holds a deciding vote on board matters, weighted to provide her with a majority decision-making capability. Additionally, founding shareholders possess votes weighted 100 times greater than those of regular shareholders, ensuring strong founding influence on the strategic direction of the lab.
In April 2025, Andreessen Horowitz was reported to lead Thinking Machines Lab's seed round of $2 billion, which "would value the company at 'at least' $10 billion". The government of Albania (Murati's country of origin) was also included in this round, an investment which required an amendment to the country's 2025 budget.