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Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding
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- eschneider 1y agoSo novel, they couldn't even come up with an original name.
- gjvc 1y agoBet they've never heard of it
- margalabargala 1y agoTo be fair the other Thinking Machines has been defunct over 30 years. That said, what was left of the old one was bought by Sun, which is now owned by Oracle. I wonder if they still own rights to the name? Not the wisest move to name your new company after something owned by the most famously litigious tech corporation.
- eddieh 1y agoYet the Jurassic Park franchise is just as strong as ever. Thinking Machines CM-5 in Jurassic Park (1993): https://www.starringthecomputer.com/appearance.html?f=11&c=15 https://www.starringthecomputer.com/appearance.html?f=11&c=1... Jurassic World Rebirth passes $500 M in revenue: https://www.koimoi.com/box-office/jurassic-world-rebirth-worldwide-box-office-hits-major-milestone-becomes-6th-highest-grossing-film-in-the-franchise/ https://www.koimoi.com/box-office/jurassic-world-rebirth-wor...
- 6177c40f 1y agoFun fact, in the novel the computers were Cray X-MPs (sadly Cray is now semi-defunct, since they were bought and merged into HPE) [1]. [1] https://cray-history.net/2023/08/20/cray-systems-in-popular-culture/ https://cray-history.net/2023/08/20/cray-systems-in-popular-...
- dibujaron 1y agoThinking Machines was chosen over the Cray because they had more visual appeal. Sheryl Handler the CEO had (has) a real flair for and it showed; they were neat looking machines
- boznz 1y agoMaybe the new company should consider something like this for the next investor show and tell https://rodyne.com/?p=1674 https://rodyne.com/?p=1674
- riffic 1y agowhat? Cray machines were pretty rad looking in their own way.
- CamperBob2 1y agoThey were, but they didn't blink.
- eddieh 1y agoThe Cray machines looked more like an airport seating area. Or with later models, obstacles in a laser tag arena. While the Thinking Machines with the moving LEDs looked alive, almost like it was designed to be a character in a movie, which they became.
- bbor 1y agoFascinating question! I can't find any mention of this seemingly obvious issue. Here's[1][2] their trademark application from February, which is still "NOT ASSIGNED". Technically it's for their logotype but I imagine it's all the same issue, considering that they include "Computer hardware" in the description of their company (which is exactly what the old one did). This site ominously says that the only action since the filing date was on June 5th, titled "LETTER OF PROTEST EVIDENCE FORWARDED" -- perhaps that's Oracle? I think this[4] is the trademark for the original's ("Thinking Machines Corporation") trademark logotype, first used in 1987 and defunct ("cancelled"?) by 1999. Another site[5] lists three other "Dead/Cancelled" trademarks owned by the original, and two more recent attempts by randos in 2006 and 2010 that were both shot down. Technically they're "Thinking Machine Lab Inc."[3], but they're basically always referred to without the "Lab", even to the point of using thinkingmachines.ai as their domain (which, hilariously, doesn't use their trademarked logotype). Another goofy tidbit is that they also filed a trademark for a serif logotype of the words "BEEP BOOP"[6] -- maybe that's their fallback name! Would be fascinated to hear from anyone familiar with US trademark law on what might be going on, and how we might see what the "LETTER OF PROTEST" is! My layperson understanding would definitely tell me that Oracle would maintain the trademarks, but perhaps they were forced to let them lapse due to lack of use? I've been slowly building (y'know how it is...) a (one-man...) company filed as "Doering Thinking Machines, LLC" for a few years (named after an old family business, "Doering Machines"), so I'm quite interested to see how this shakes out! [1] https://furm.com/trademarks/thinking-machines-99054776 https://furm.com/trademarks/thinking-machines-99054776 [2] For the love of god, please HN gods, just make these comments markdown. IDK what battle you're fighting but it's a baffling one. The lack of blockquotes is painful, but the lack of inline links is downright diabolical! You have three people now, you can afford the effort ;) [3] https://trademarks.justia.com/741/37/thinking-machines-74137586.html https://trademarks.justia.com/741/37/thinking-machines-74137... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab [5] https://uspto.report/TM/99051772 https://uspto.report/TM/99051772 [6] https://trademarks.justia.com/990/71/beep-99071391.html https://trademarks.justia.com/990/71/beep-99071391.html
- mrandish 1y agoI really hope these seemingly experienced entrepreneurs got the trademark sorted out and locked down before adopting it. Otherwise it may be an expensive lesson. IANAL but I do know trademarking a logotype is a kind of 'trade dress' that's not the same trademarking the words of the name (even if those words appear\ in the logotype).
- dboreham 1y agoOne would imagine they already thought of that. There are at least two people at a16z old enough to know about the original TM.
- TacticalCoder 1y ago[dead]
- aswanson 1y agoMaybe it's a throwback fashion statement.
- k2enemy 1y agoI guess "random and pleasing" is appropriate for both CM-5s and LLMs.
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- beauzero 1y agoDoes anybody know what they are building yet?
- wubrr 1y agohype
- throwoutway 1y agoThis is what I expect. Theyre Not hiring even engineers. By the time they have a strategy, plan, hire, and act on that plan they will be behind the curve, and force to use the $ to acquire someone who did.
- leesec 1y agoThis is wrong. they have strong engineering and a product coming this year
- boshalfoshal 1y agoWell this is blatantly false, she linked the career page and I know of people that received offers recently. They have very strong talent from Meta's FAIR/Pytorch teams as well as a lot of strong people from OAI.
- red2awn 1y agoIt is literally in the article: > "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post on the X social media platform.
- qoez 1y agoI need to get around to betting against this on prediction markets soon.
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- i_love_retros 1y ago[flagged]
- starik36 1y agoYou manage to turn any topic, any conversation into your pet issue, don't you.
- i_love_retros 1y agoWhen billions of dollars are being wasted on hype tech while people are homeless, starving, being murdered in Gaza etc, yes! I do!
- starik36 1y agoYou must be fun at parties.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoDo you really think you’re increasing sympathy for your cause with this tripe? You may actually be more effective if you troll for the other side.
- leesec 1y agoWouldn't overlook this company, they manage to bring over a good deal of top talent from OpenAI including John Schulman
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- lenerdenator 1y ago> "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post, opens new tab on the X social media platform. We need to jack up interest rates again.
- codingwagie 1y agohahaha
- Melatonic 1y agoThis actually sounds like they might be making something that is generally useful to other companies training foundational models. What that is - I have no idea. But they may be onto something here. Sort of like the old adage about the Goldrush - why pan for gold when you can just sell tons of shovels to all the others rushing to get rich?
- lenerdenator 1y agoThen they should give an answer that isn't filled with the buzzwords currently used to lubricate the money out of some coked-out VC angel investor's accounts.
- pdabbadabba 1y agoCould somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines in this thread? I realize that they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building, and they have some pretty significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself. Some amount of skepticism is warranted, of course, but a lot of these comments read as closer to hostility.
- bossyTeacher 1y agoBecause it looks like VC are spendings ridicoulous amounts of money for hype while many startups with actual products and a product market fit struggle to attract investors because their product is not related to transformers.
- Roark66 1y agoIt makes perfect sense... Why spend time and money on building a product in hope of attracting VCs that may like it? Instead present your idea in an intentionally vague way that makes everyone's imagination fill in the blanks in the most favorable way.
- riku_iki 1y ago> but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building you imply that VCs are rational because bet their own money, which in current complicated world probably is not true. VC funds get money from complicated funnel likely including my/your retirement account and country public debt, VC managers likely receive bonuses for closed deals and not long term gains which may materialize in 10 years. So, investing 2B into non-existing product with unclear market fit/team/tech moat smells very strongly.
- cheema33 1y ago> you imply that VCs are rational because bet their own money, which in current complicated world probably is not true. Correct. Most VCs are using someone else's money. See Softbank. And making extremely poor judgements on how to use that money.
- myth_drannon 1y agoWell, if you have to pay $200 million to a top AI engineer, $2B is a very short runway for a startup.
- erulabs 1y agoI think it takes a lot of temerity and hubris to look at a 2B raise and assume it's all hype. A16Z has certainly had some misses, but one assumes there actually is some product they're showing behind closed doors that makes this round much more reasonable than it appears from the outside. If something makes no sense, seems totally crazy, and is being done by a crowd of extremely smart people, you can only assume one of two things: they are actually crazy and frittering away 2B on hype or, just maybe, there's something we're not aware of. If there are only two camps: optimistic and naive or pessimistic and dismissive, I'll choose naive every day of the week. Anyways, congrats to Thinking Machines and here's hoping they do have something awesome up their sleeve!
- reactordev 1y agoOh it’s going to get exciting indeed!
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> A16Z has certainly had some misses, but one assumes there actually is some product They don’t need to show a product. It’s been demonstrated that with capital and some skill you can train a foundation model. A16Z has the former. Murati has the latter.
- FreakLegion 1y ago> a crowd of extremely smart people I don't disagree with your broader point, but have spent enough time with enough a16z partners to say they're just people. Not outright stupid, but not extremely smart, either. And their error rate is pretty high. Which...to some extent is by design. It's part of a VC's job to make bad bets. Sometimes the price of getting into a deal at all is getting in on insane terms, but you still do it because that one investment could return the entire fund. Maybe Thinking Machines is a winner, maybe it's another Clubhouse. We'll see.
- danpalmer 1y agoI do agree for $2bn, but it’s also well known that US and in particular SV VCs will fund ideas and people, I.e. potential, whereas everywhere else funds results. It’s that culture that creates some spectacular hits, and a vast number of misses. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a different approach and means that the funding doesn’t necessarily suggest the results one might expect.
- Runsthroughit 1y agoVCs are betting they'll get out with at least some gains before this bubble bursts. They have literally nothing new, not even in theory. They'll build a smaller-but-not-that-small-still-better-than-you-expect model which will be kind of open for others, which means they'll cut some deal and pretend they did something and that they received something in return.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> They have literally nothing new, not even in theory They haven’t built anything yet. It’s a bit premature to call out the non-existing product as insufficiently novel.
- StanislavPetrov 1y ago>It’s a bit premature to call out the non-existing product as insufficiently novel. I think the point is that the pie-in-the-sky promises are insufficiently novel.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> point is that the pie-in-the-sky promises are insufficiently novel You have no data to judge novelty on. If you think AI rocket science, they’re flubs. If you don’t, they have a shot. Either way, I can’t see novelty being unsatisfied.
- Keyframe 1y agoI guess investors are hoping for another Anthropic, or resurrection of Richard Feynman to help with development.
- dcl 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporation for the reference
- endlessvoid94 1y agoDanny Hillis deserves a mention
- Keyframe 1y agoAbsolutely, moreso than Feynman in this context. But, Danny Hills doesn't make a good sound bite.
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- bgwalter 1y agoAndreessen Horowitz is not gambling with their own money: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/andreessen-horowitz-seeks-raise-20-billion-megafund-amid-global-interest-us-ai-2025-04-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/andreessen-horowitz... Moreover, if some banks will fail in the aftermath, they'll be bailed out at the expense of you know whom.
- paxys 1y agoHow do you think VC firms work? There is no "own money". Their entire business is getting rich people, institutional investors, governments, pension funds, endowments etc. to give them money and investing that money in startups, keeping a cut for themselves.
- bgwalter 1y agoWhy do you ask me? One of the top comments assumes that it would be crazy to assume recklessness on the part of a16z. I point out that they are insulated from the consequences on multiple levels.
- rl1987 1y agoExactly the point they are making?
- xhkkffbf 1y agoNone? I think almost all VC partners are vested in their funds. They have skin in the game. Yes, they do profit from managing the money of others, but I think it's rare for them not to be putting their own money on the line.
- mizzao 1y agoGives a whole new meaning to the "2 on 12 seed round" !
- awaymazdacx5 1y ago2bn from 16az, post-artificial paradigm auto-correct. this is a market exodus for parting the red sea.
- moezd 1y agoAt this point, arms-crossed mugshot of "{ex-Open AI} raises $2B" is a meme. Training one epoch of a model the size of the GPT-4 family is easily an 8 figure job. Considering other ops costs, UI and backend dev, securing Everest sized datasets, demos/talks, wages, bonuses etc, this probably gives them around 100 trial and errors, or in other words "Look at me mum, I won 100 chips for the casino!" And imagine being the ops guy there, about to run a new training batch, but you specified the wrong input path. Puff, the money is gone. Absolutely wild stuff.
- rhubarbtree 1y agoMurati was CTO. Whilst Brockman and Altman may have bypassed or undermined her on some occasions, she can take large credit for OpenAI’s technical success. Brockman can take credit for his extremely hard work, increasing cadence. Altman for incredible fundraising and (often polarising) visionary leadership. From what I’ve read, Murati was an excellent CTO.
- LarsDu88 1y agoSome of the best OpenAI people work at TM. Wish them all the best.
- dandanua 1y agoYou can buy six B-2 bombers for that money. And use them against competitor AI startups. You think this sounds stupid? This is where all this AI arms race is going.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoNow that I would invest in.
- blackoil 1y agoHow many nukes? Will carpeting Silicon Valley unlock the value?
- FergusArgyll 1y agoThat's what a B2B business is?
- kvgr 1y agoI am willing to sell my killthe.ai domain for the highest bider :D
- malthaus 1y agoa16z is the new softbank when it comes to signaling short or run
- oaiey 1y agoThis company calls for a Butlerian Jihad. I mean, in all seriousness: calling themselves like the original evil in Dune with at least a likelihood that a evil general intelligence is showing up soon is very disturbing.
- physix 1y agoWhat are they going to spend those $2B on?
- senko 1y agoBuying Windsurf, presumably.
- bluelightning2k 1y agoSUCH a good comment - made me laugh
- rchaud 1y agoSigning bonuses for 10 engineers.
- moomoo11 1y agoHow about defense systems? Maybe they can make a T-800 to ensure when AI/skynet goes rogue humanity has a chance. It’s the ultimate AI safety. “I’ll be back”
- lysecret 1y agoAfter what we have seen in terms of talent acquisition this seems like a no-brainer really.
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- seydor 1y agoIt's kinda sad that this is frontpage news, because there is nothing related to technology in the title, nothing intellectually interesting.
- disqard 1y agoYou are right! Just like how a certain contingent flags posts that discuss any appalling misuse of technology under the pretext that "oh, it's politics, etc.", you should do the same for these scammy news items: flag + hide. I don't know that it'll work, but it is worth trying.
- redeux 1y agoYC is first and foremost a startup accelerator so it makes sense that entrepreneurship would be part of the discussion that people here are interested in.
- bluelightning2k 1y agoThis is so weird to me. Yes, she was there at OpenAI and by all accounts a super respected non researcher. Clearly she's incredible, her reputation proceeds her etc. but is operational strength (being a good exec) really what gets to AGI? Feels almost like cargo-culting.
- dan-robertson 1y agoI suppose one should expect ‘time to agi’ to be a function of: 1. Researchers 2. Productivity-enhancing things in the org (either technical stuff like frameworks/optimisations or nebulous social things like better collaboration) 3. Amount of available compute. 4. Luck And then the past experience with openAI should help a lot with doing a good job of #1 and #2 even if it is just being a competent executive.
- yunwal 1y agoSurely availability of data is here as well?
- Oarch 1y agoSorry: precedes
- TrackerFF 1y agoIIRC, she was the driving force behind ChatGPT - the product, that is. Arguably the most successful AI/LLM product. Maybe the product she’s pitched has massive commercial potential.
- _yy01 1y agoWhat does one do to be considered as "driving force" et al?
- techpineapple 1y agoThe ability to attract good researchers is probably more important than being one your self. > Feels almost like cargo-culting. Why almost?
- ritzaco 1y ago> The fundraise also saw participation from AI chip giant Nvidia This is really obvious 'round-tripping' no? Nvidia invests in startups that are going to spend a majority of their funds on GPUs, Nvidia's revenue goes up, Nvidia's stock goes up, Nvidia makes more 'investments' in startups who use that investment to continue the cycle?
- Havoc 1y agoYes, though realistically they’d be buying the GPUs regardless of who the investors and this sort of vertical integration isn’t directly illegal
- novaRom 1y agoYes, except they are monopolist, right? It's basically not optional choice.
- Havoc 1y agoTechnically dominating a market by virtue of best product (or only available) is legal too. If you can achieve that without anti competitive behaviour then being a monopolist is fine. Legally anyway Whether this circular thing counts as such behaviour - don’t know but doubt it
- jstummbillig 1y agoTo an extend, sure, but not in the "obvious" way you suggest, because that's very illegal. Any arrangement for Nvidia to obviously and directly fund startups to clearly funnel money back through purchases would quickly attract scrutiny from auditors, regulators, and co-investors.
- bboygravity 1y agoSidenote: Nvidia has been caught round-tripping before, way back. Looking at the valuation I don't get how they would not be round-tripping and otherwise cooking the books a lot right now (not necesarily limited to this case, but more in general). Very strong Y2K bubble vibes.
- Havoc 1y agoI do hope they have some novel idea up their sleeve. Another firm just executing a similar playbook even if well executed is not going to face headwinds against incumbents
- bitwize 1y agoWho is this person and why is she attempting to skinwalk the name of a really cool computer company (creators of the Connection Machine)?
- TrackerFF 1y agoEx-CTO of OpenAI
- bitwize 1y agoI guess we know the answer to the second question, in the words of Reggie Watts: "for no apparent reason, other than to create a false sense of importance, of which I couldn't retain on my own."
- nicwolff 1y agoI hope Sheryl and Danny are getting compensated somehow...
- DebtDeflation 1y agoRemind me, does she have plans to release an actual product? Or is this like Ilya's company where their first and only product will be AGI, if/when that ever happens?
- kookamamie 1y agoLooks like a bubble, pops like a bubble.
- JCM9 1y agoOn Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but investors are about to lose their shirts in this space.
- awongh 1y agoYou mean, "I have no revenue and no business model but I was the CTO of one of the most important technical companies of this generation, we put out one of the fastest growing SaaS products of all time in a completely new technical category."- not sure how much more signal you would need than that. I don't really get why anyone would be confused about why they are throwing money at her. It's an extremely large amount of money, but it's not as if she has no track record. It is a bubble, of course, but this person would get $100m round in a non-bubble.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoBy that logic it almost sounds as if Meg Whitman was highly qualified to run HP…
- awongh 1y agoShe was qualified. Are you saying that her previous experience shouldn't have counted as a positive attribute for being hired?
- arthurcolle 1y agoIt's a false signal
- xhkkffbf 1y agoIt's true that eBay did well during her tenure. And it's also true that she was a better grownup than the people running it before. But she also said that a monkey could drive the train. Would someone else have done better? Could a monkey have delivered the same results? We'll never know, but the experience at HP doesn't validate her as a business genius.
- freddealmeida 1y agoSheesh. 12B. Here I am working my ass off for $25M.
- ulfw 1y agoRidiculous bubble. Valued for what exactly?