Thinking Machines Lab is a research-driven artificial intelligence startup aiming to make next-generation AI systems more understandable, customizable, and broadly useful. Founded in 2025 under the leadership of Mira Murati (formerly CTO of OpenAI), the company brings together talent from top AI labs with a mission to open up the “black boxes” of frontier AI.
Thinking Machines’ vision centers on multimodal interaction—models that perceive, reason, and communicate through multiple modalities (text, vision, code, etc.)—while enabling human-AI collaboration and giving users more control over behavior and values. Rather than simply chasing raw capability, it emphasizes transparency, alignment, and scientific openness.
The startup is structured to balance research and productization. It plans to publish technical work and open components of its stack, while also creating interfaces and tools that allow developers and organizations to experiment with and adapt its models. This hybrid model—part lab, part platform—is intended to scale both innovation and adoption.
By mid-2025, Thinking Machines had already captured attention with a record-breaking seed raise and a high valuation, signaling strong investor confidence. With Mira Murati at the helm, the company is positioning itself as a rising frontier lab—one that seeks not only to build powerful AI systems, but to do so in a way that’s more open, interpretable, and aligned with human needs.
