Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2025 by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati and other researchers with experience at major AI labs.
The company attracted attention almost immediately because it raised a US$2 billion seed round at a reported US$12 billion post money valuation. Since then it has released Tinker, a managed training API, launched its own open weight Inkling models and signed a major long term computing partnership with NVIDIA.
Who founded Thinking Machines Lab?
Mira Murati is the company’s chief executive and most visible founder. The early team also included several researchers and engineers from OpenAI and other leading AI companies.
The company started with an unusually strong concentration of senior AI talent, which is one reason investors were willing to fund it so heavily before it had a large product business.
The US$2 billion seed round
Thinking Machines closed a US$2 billion seed round in 2025. Andreessen Horowitz led the financing, with participation from investors including NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD and Jane Street.
Reports described the company at a US$12 billion post money valuation. Earlier coverage sometimes used a US$10 billion figure because that referred to the valuation before the new investment was added.
What is Tinker?
Tinker is a managed training API for researchers and developers who want to fine tune AI models without running the distributed infrastructure themselves.
The user controls the data and training logic while Thinking Machines handles scheduling, compute resources and failure recovery. The service supports workflows such as reinforcement learning, model specialisation, forecasting and continual learning.
Tinker was announced in October 2025 and later moved to general availability. It remains one of the clearest commercial products from the company.
What is Inkling?
In July 2026, Thinking Machines released Inkling, its first in house open weight model. The company has since released Inkling Small as well.
That matters because Thinking Machines is no longer only a company that helps other developers fine tune existing models. It is also building its own models and using Tinker as part of a wider research and product stack.
The NVIDIA partnership
In March 2026, Thinking Machines and NVIDIA announced a long term strategic partnership involving investment and access to large amounts of NVIDIA computing infrastructure.
Reuters reported that the arrangement includes at least one gigawatt of next generation Vera Rubin systems over multiple years. That gives Thinking Machines access to the scale of compute needed to train frontier models.
Why people keep talking about the valuation
Thinking Machines has repeatedly been linked to much higher valuation discussions after its seed round.
- 2025: the completed seed round valued the company at roughly US$12 billion after the investment.
- Late 2025: reports said the company had discussed a much larger valuation in the US$50 billion range.
- September 2026: TechCrunch reported that Accel was in talks to lead a US$1 billion round at a valuation of at least US$40 billion.
The last figure should not be treated as a completed valuation unless the financing closes. Funding talks can change or disappear entirely.
How much revenue does Thinking Machines make?
Thinking Machines is private and does not publish audited public financial statements. TechCrunch reported in September 2026 that the company’s annual revenue run rate had passed US$100 million, citing a source familiar with its finances.
That figure is useful context, but it is not the same thing as confirmed annual revenue in a public filing.
What is the company trying to build?
The broader idea is customisable AI rather than one fixed model for every user. Tinker lets developers adapt models to their own data and tasks, while Inkling gives the company an open weight model family of its own.
That makes Thinking Machines part AI lab, part developer infrastructure company and part model provider.
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What we verified
Tinker’s launch history, current product description, Inkling releases and the NVIDIA partnership are supported by Thinking Machines’ own material. The US$40 billion figure refers to reported funding talks, not a completed round.