Accel is in talks to lead a $1B round for Thinking Machines, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, at a valuation of at least $40B, TechCrunch reported on September 3, citing The Information and its own source.
The price tag would sit below the $50B valuation the company reportedly sought late last year. Thinking Machines is generating more than $100M in annual revenue, a source told TechCrunch, which would still leave the round at an extraordinarily rich multiple.
In July the startup released Inkling, an open-weight model that earns compute fees when customers adapt it on proprietary data through its Tinker platform. Its previous raise, a $2B round led by Andreessen Horowitz with Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners, ranked among the largest seed financings on record and valued the company at $12B.
Murati’s lab has also seen high-profile departures, with co-founders including Lilian Weng and Luke Metz returning to OpenAI. Neither Thinking Machines nor Accel responded to requests for comment, and the round had not been completed at the time of the report.
