Thinking Machines is in talks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion, with existing backer Accel discussing a role as lead investor, The Information reported Thursday.
The proposed valuation would put the AI startup below the $50 billion valuation it reportedly sought late last year.
Thinking Machines’ annual revenue run rate is above $100 million, a source familiar with the company’s financials told The Information. At the $40 billion valuation, that would put the company’s valuation at more than 400 times its annual revenue run rate.
The company was founded early last year by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, alongside a group of former OpenAI researchers. Its previous financing, a $2 billion round, ranked among the largest seed financings in history and was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed and Conviction Partners.
The company has also gone through several high-profile departures. Co-founders Lilian Weng and Luke Metz, for example, have since returned to OpenAI.
In July, Thinking Machines released Inkling, an open-weight model with 975 billion total parameters and 41 billion active parameters.
Thinking Machines describes Inkling as a general-purpose multimodal model that works across text, images and audio. The company has positioned it primarily as a base model that developers can adapt to their own data and use cases.