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Thinking Machines Lab revenue, valuation & funding
Thinking Machines Lab was valued at $12B in July 2025, its last confirmed round, and was reported in November 2026 to be raising $5B at a $40B pre-money valuation. It's private with no stated IPO plan, and its yearly run rate passed a reported $100M in September 2026.
At a glance
- Valuation: $12B at its last confirmed round, the July 2025 seed. Business Insider reported in November 2026 that it is raising $5B at a $40B pre-money valuation.
- Revenue: a yearly run rate over $100M in September 2026, as reported by TechCrunch. The company publishes no results.
- Status: private. No stock ticker. No stated IPO plan.
- Founded: February 2025 in San Francisco, by Mira Murati.
- CEO: Mira Murati.
- Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed and Conviction Partners, among others.
- Products: Tinker, a service for fine-tuning open models, and the Inkling models.
- Headquarters: 2300 Harrison St in San Francisco's Mission District, since August 2026.
Is Thinking Machines Lab public? Can you buy its stock?
No. Thinking Machines Lab is a private company. Its shares don't trade on any stock exchange, and it has no ticker symbol, according to Nasdaq Private Market.
It hasn't had an IPO. No IPO filing has been reported, and its executives haven't given a timing for going public.
Its shares are held by its founders, staff and investors. Founding shareholders' votes count 100 times those of regular shareholders, according to Wikipedia. This page reports facts and gives no investment advice.
Valuation, round by round
It was valued at $12B in its July 2025 seed, and the round reported in November 2026 would value it at $40B before new money.
| Date | Valued at | Raised | Led by | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2026 | $40B | In talks | Accel | Business Insider (via DNYUZ) |
| Nov 2025 | $50B | In talks | — | Reuters (via Yahoo Finance) |
| Jul 2025 | $12B | $2B | Andreessen Horowitz | TechCrunch |
The $5B round at $40B was reported by Business Insider and hadn't been announced as closed by November 7, 2026. Talks at about $50B in November 2025 didn't close.
Revenue
The company doesn't publish results, and TechCrunch reported a run rate over $100M in September 2026. A reporter at The Information put annualised revenue in the hundreds of millions that month (The Next Web).
| Date | Figure | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | $100M+ | Reported | TechCrunch |
A run rate is a month's revenue times twelve. It isn't a year's audited revenue, and no profit or loss figures have been reported.
How Thinking Machines Lab makes money
The company calls itself an artificial intelligence research and product company. It releases its Inkling models as open weights and earns nothing on the weights themselves, according to The Next Web.
Its money comes through Tinker, which sells access to GPU clusters for training and fine-tuning open models. TechCrunch reports that Tinker charges usage-based compute fees for adapting models.
In March 2026 it agreed a multiyear partnership with NVIDIA to deploy at least one gigawatt of Vera Rubin systems. Deployment is targeted for early 2027.
Products
- Tinker (announced October 1, 2025). An API for fine-tuning language models. It reached general availability in December 2025. Wikipedia
- Tinker's models. It launched with 14 text-only models from Qwen and Llama. By October 2026 it had added over 20 more, including Inkling. Thinking Machines Lab
- Inkling (July 2026). A 975-billion-parameter open-weight mixture-of-experts model that handles text, images and audio. The Next Web
- Inkling Small (July 31, 2026). A 276-billion-parameter model with performance comparable to Inkling. Wikipedia
- Inkling 2 Small (November 5, 2026). Its second model generation, a mixture-of-experts model with 594B total parameters and 17B active. It accepts image inputs and launched on Tinker with closed weights. Thinking Machines Lab
- Open weights. The company said it intends to release Inkling 2 Small's full weights under an Apache 2.0 license the week after launch, once external safety testing and red-teaming are done. Thinking Machines Lab
Customers
The company hasn't published a user count. Its site carries Tinker customer stories.
- Bridgewater trained Qwen3-235B on Tinker to pick out financial news and analysis that matters to its investors. Thinking Machines Lab
- Glean used Tinker to train Waldo, an agentic search model built on NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano. Thinking Machines Lab
- Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley and Redwood Research had research teams among early Tinker users, according to Sacra. Sacra
Leadership
Several co-founders have left. Barret Zoph, co-founder and CTO, left in January 2026, according to The Next Web. OpenAI announced it had him back within the hour.
Co-founder Luke Metz also returned to OpenAI. Andrew Tulloch went to Meta in late 2025, and co-founder Lilian Weng stepped down in July 2026.
- Mira Murati, founder and CEO. She was chief technology officer of OpenAI before founding the company in February 2025. Wikipedia
- John Schulman, co-founder and chief scientist. He co-founded OpenAI and stayed when other co-founders left. The Next Web
- Soumith Chintala, co-creator of PyTorch. He was brought in to run technical work after Barret Zoph left in January 2026. The Next Web
Who owns Thinking Machines Lab?
Its founders, staff and investors. As a private company it doesn't publish who holds what, and no stake has been disclosed.
Founding shareholders' votes are weighted 100 times those of regular shareholders, according to Wikipedia. Mira Murati also holds a deciding vote on board matters, weighted to give her a majority.
- Andreessen Horowitz led the July 2025 seed round, joined by Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed and Conviction Partners. TechCrunch
- Nvidia made what it called a significant investment in March 2026, alongside its compute partnership. The amount wasn't disclosed. NVIDIA Blog
- Accel, an investor since the seed round, was reported in September 2026 to be in talks to lead a new round. The Next Web
- AMD, Cisco and Jane Street are listed by Sacra among its investors. TechCrunch
Competitors
Sacra names model-agnostic cloud platforms as rivals to its model customization business. They let companies reach many foundation models through one API.
Timeline and latest news
From its founding to the latest reports, newest first.
- Nov 6, 2026Latest
Business Insider reported it is raising $5B at a $40B pre-money valuation, led by Accel. Business Insider (via DNYUZ) - Nov 5, 2026Latest
Introduced Inkling 2 Small, its second model generation, on Tinker. Thinking Machines Lab - Sep 3, 2026Latest
The Information reported talks to raise $5B to $6B at a pre-money valuation of at least $40B. The Next Web - Sep 3, 2026
TechCrunch reported a yearly revenue run rate over $100M. TechCrunch - Jul 31, 2026
Released Inkling Small, a 276-billion-parameter model. Wikipedia - Jul 2026
Shipped Inkling, a 975-billion-parameter open-weight model for text, images and audio. The Next Web - Mar 10, 2026
Announced a multiyear partnership with NVIDIA to deploy at least one gigawatt of Vera Rubin systems. NVIDIA Blog - Jan 2026
Co-founder and CTO Barret Zoph left and returned to OpenAI. The Next Web - Nov 13, 2025
Bloomberg reported early funding talks at about $50B. They didn't close. Reuters (via Yahoo Finance) - Oct 1, 2025
Announced Tinker, an API for fine-tuning language models. Wikipedia - Jul 15, 2025
Raised about $2B in a seed round at a $12B valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch - Feb 2025
Founded in San Francisco by Mira Murati. Wikipedia
Questions people ask
Is Thinking Machines Lab a public company? Can I buy its stock?
No. It's private and has no ticker, so its shares don't trade on any exchange, according to Nasdaq Private Market.
When will Thinking Machines Lab IPO?
It hasn't had an IPO. No filing has been reported, and its executives haven't given a timing.
Who owns Thinking Machines Lab?
Its founders, staff and investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Nvidia. Mira Murati holds a deciding board vote, according to Wikipedia.
Who is the CEO of Thinking Machines Lab?
Mira Murati, who was chief technology officer of OpenAI before founding it.
Who founded Thinking Machines Lab?
Mira Murati, in February 2025 in San Francisco. Co-founders include John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Luke Metz and Lilian Weng.
How much is Thinking Machines Lab worth?
$12B at its July 2025 seed round, its last confirmed valuation. Business Insider reported in November 2026 that it is raising $5B at a $40B pre-money valuation. No close has been announced.
How much revenue does Thinking Machines Lab make?
A yearly run rate over $100M in September 2026, as reported by TechCrunch. The company doesn't publish results.
How does Thinking Machines Lab make money?
Through Tinker, which charges usage-based fees for GPU time to train and fine-tune open models. It earns nothing on its open model weights, according to The Next Web.
Where is Thinking Machines Lab headquartered?
At 2300 Harrison St in San Francisco's Mission District, since August 2026.
Who are Thinking Machines Lab's competitors?
Sacra names AWS Bedrock, Microsoft Azure AI and Google Vertex AI.
People on Real Alpha
- Mira Murati, Founder & CEO, Thinking Machines Lab
- John Schulman, Chief Scientist, Thinking Machines Lab
- Soumith Chintala, Thinking Machines Lab; co-creator of PyTorch
Other companies in Frontier labs
OpenAI · Anthropic · Google DeepMind · Meta · SpaceXAI · Microsoft AI · Mistral AI · DeepSeek · Safe Superintelligence · Cohere · Moonshot AI · Reflection AI
How this page is sourced
Each figure links to the filing, company statement or news report it came from, with its date. Run rates are what reporters were told, not audited results; estimates and unconfirmed reports are marked. Quotes are what each person said on the record, with the minute they said it. Spotted something that's off? .
Last checked Nov 7, 2026