Thinking Machines Lab
San Francisco AI startup founded in 2025 by Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI; maker of the Inkling open-weights model.
At a glance
Who owns it
Investors include Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia.
See all 2People
Mira Murati
See all 2
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Thinking Machines Lab is an American artificial-intelligence company in San Francisco, founded in February 2025 by Mira Murati, formerly chief technology officer of OpenAI, and structured as a public benefit corporation.
- Its founding team came largely from OpenAI and included Barret Zoph, Lilian Weng, John Schulman and Luke Metz.
- By July 2025 it had raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Nvidia, AMD, Cisco and Jane Street among the investors.
- It launched Tinker, an API for fine-tuning open models, in October 2025 and released the open-weights model Inkling in July 2026.
- Several founding members returned to OpenAI in 2026.
Key facts
- Founded
- February 2025, by Mira Murati1
- Structure
- Public benefit corporation, San Francisco1
- Funding
- $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation by July 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz1
- Products
- Tinker fine-tuning API (October 2025); Inkling open-weights model (July 2026)1
- Departures
- Barret Zoph and Luke Metz returned to OpenAI in January 2026; Lilian Weng in July 20262
Who owns it
Investors include Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia.
Investors
- Andreessen HorowitzOrganization
led the 2025 $2 billion round · since Jul 2025 1
- NvidiaOrganization
in the 2025 round; strategic partnership March 2026 · since Jul 2025 1
People
Founded by
- Mira Murati
Before
People until Jul 2026
Lilian Weng (founding team) 2
Links
Sources
Last checked against its sources today
Is something on this page wrong or out of date? Tell us
The line under a date fills as time passes: empty when new, then one equal share each for a day, a week, a month and a year. For episodes and other items it is full at 2 years; for "last checked", at a year. A striped line means the date is known only to the month or year.