Sources familiar with the matter said that Mira-Mulati's new startup ThinkingMachineLabs is planning to raise a US$1 billion financing round at a valuation of about US$9 billion. This funding round is still ongoing and details may change. A spokesman for Mulati declined to comment.
A $9 billion valuation is unusually high for a startup less than a year old, but investors have been eager to back artificial intelligence startups, especially those founded by former OpenAI employees.
Previously, Mulati worked at OpenAI for six and a half years as chief technology officer, responsible for the development of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence research projects. In November 2023, she was briefly named interim CEO after the OpenAI board abruptly fired Sam Altman, a move that sparked turmoil within the company. After Altman returned as CEO, Murati resumed his role as chief technology officer.
Exactly what Mulati will do after leaving OpenAI last year has been Silicon Valley's favorite parlor game in recent months, with few details emerging until the company emerged from stealth last week.
In a blog post, Murati positioned the startup as an AI research and product lab dedicated to making artificial intelligence more accessible.
"To close the gap, we are building the Thinking Machines Lab to make AI systems more broadly understood, customizable, and universally capable," Murati wrote.
Murati has recruited a slew of engineers and artificial intelligence researchers from her former employer, OpenAI, as well as companies Meta and Anthropic. Several of Murati's former colleagues, including John Schulman, who co-founded ChatGPT, Jonathan Lachman, former OpenAI special projects director, Barret Zoph, co-creator of ChatGPT, and Alexander Kirillov, who worked closely with Murati to develop ChatGPT's voice mode, also work at ThinkingMachinesLab.
Mulati is one of a handful of former OpenAI executives who have gone on to start their own companies. Former OpenAI chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever left the company in May 2024 and founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. shortly after leaving. Dario and Daniela Amoudi also worked at OpenAI and founded Anthropic in 2021.