$2 Billion Before You Even Launched Your First Product?

Imagine walking into Shark Tank with no product, no prototype, no pitch deck just a “trust me.” Now imagine all the sharks throwing billions at you anyway, that’s pretty much what Mira Murati just did.

Mira, the genius who helped bring ChatGPT into your life just raised $2 billion for her new company, Thinking Machines Lab.

And get this; they haven’t even launched anything yet. Not a demo, not a beta, and not even a “coming soon” page. The cherry on top? The company is already valued at $12 billion. That’s more than the GDP of some small countries.

So who’s writing the checks? Big names. Like, big-big names; Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round, and the guest list of investors reads like a tech Avengers team: Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Jane Street, ServiceNow, Accel… basically, if your laptop runs it, streams it, or calculates it, they’re in.

It’s one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.

So if you’ve ever struggled to raise $20 for your group project in college, just know Mira raised two billion dollars for a company still in pre-pre-pre-launch.

Wait, what is she building? Great question. Nobody really knows yet. Seriously.

What we do know is that Mira left OpenAI less than a year ago, the place where she helped build ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Codex. All the cool AI toys you now pretend you discovered before they were mainstream.

She says her new company is building “multimodal AI systems.” Basically, AI that doesn’t just talk, but also sees, understands, and interacts like a real person. Think R2-D2 but less beep-boop and more “Hey, I saw you’re stressed, want me to book your vacation and file your taxes?”

Also, they’re going open source with it, meaning developers and researchers everywhere might actually get to play with the tech instead of watching it from a distance like it’s behind velvet ropes.

Mira’s not doing this solo either. She’s brought along a squad of heavy-hitters from OpenAI: John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz. These guys don’t play, they’ve built some of the most advanced AI systems on Earth.

The AI world is basically a high-stakes space race right now. Everyone’s sprinting; OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta. Like it’s the Olympics for robots. Billions are being spent, everyone wants to be the first to build something that makes you say, “Whoa.”

Rumor has it Meta even tried to buy Mira’s company before it really got going. But like any good rom-com plot, they couldn’t close the deal.

Despite all the chaos, investors think Mira’s team has a real shot at building the next big thing. And judging by the $2B in her back pocket, Wall Street agrees.

Unlike OpenAI, which has gone a bit more secretive lately, Mira’s startup is going the opposite route. Open doors, open code, and open research.

She wants AI to be accessible, equitable, and empowering. Not just another shiny tool for billion-dollar companies to keep to themselves. Which, let’s be honest, is refreshing in a world where even your fridge needs a subscription now.

Thinking Machines says they’ll reveal their first product before the end of Q3, sometime before September ends.

Will this be the iPhone moment for AI? Or just another flashy trailer for a movie that never gets made? Either way, you gotta admit; it’s pretty impressive to raise $2 billion just on your name and an idea.

If you walked away from everything today; your current company, your title, your current product, would people still back you?

Would customers trust your vision before you even launched? Would your team follow you into a brand-new project on belief alone?

Have you built this kind of credibility yet?

Reply and let me know.

- Matt Masinga