Thinking Machines Lab seeks $5 billion at a $40 billion valuation, with Accel to lead, report says

Nov 8, 2026
Mira Murati's lab is raising at more than three times its July 2025 seed valuation, Business Insider reports, after a $50 billion attempt broke down.

Thinking Machines Lab is raising $5 billion at a $40 billion pre-money valuation, with Accel planning to lead the round, according to a Business Insider report cited by Tech Funding News. So far only Accel has been named as a participant, and the use of the funds has not been disclosed.

The lab, founded in February 2025 by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, raised a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation in July 2025. The new valuation is more than three times that, but about 20% below the $50 billion figure discussed in late 2025; TokenPost reports that the earlier effort broke down in negotiations. Three of Murati's co-founders left for Meta and OpenAI between October 2025 and January 2026.

Thinking Machines makes money through Tinker, a service that lets organisations train their own models on their own data, and a source told TechCrunch in September that annual revenue exceeded $100 million. Nvidia was reported in September as a possible provider of around half of a $5 billion to $6 billion round. The lab recently released its Inkling 2 Small model.

We hope you enjoyed this article

Consider subscribing to one of our newsletters like AI Funding Brief or Daily AI Brief.

Also, consider following us on social media:

AI Funding News AI Brief AI Brief (X)
Free newsletter

AI Funding Brief

Guide
AI Writing and Copywriting

AI Writing and Copywriting

Specialist tools for drafting and revising prose.

Whitepaper

Tensordyne Napier: What If One Rack Could Do the Work of Nine?

Tensordyne

This Tensordyne whitepaper presents Napier, an inference-focused AI processor and rack-scale system based on the company’s TDN Math logarithmic number system. It examines infrastructure requirements for large mixture-of-experts and agentic models, compares major inference architecture approaches, and details the TDN AIP processor, TDN72 pod, TDN Link fabric, and Napier Ultra configuration. The paper reports simulation-based performance, cost, and accuracy-validation results, including Tensordyne’s projected comparison of one Napier rack with a nine-rack Nvidia Rubin plus Groq deployment; the chip is reported as taped out and in fabrication.

Read more

You may also like

Free, six days a week

Daily AI Brief: the AI news that matters, in your inbox.