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A comparatively new AI startup is making waves within the tech world, not attributable to advances it’s making in synthetic intelligence, however due to the quantity of capital it just lately raised — a staggering $2 billion — with no product to indicate for it, CNBC reported.
“We have been working hard for the past 6 months on what I believe is the most ambitious multimodal AI program in the world,” stated Alexander Kirillov, the top of multimodal analysis at Thinking Machines Lab, the corporate that secured the seven-figure spherical of funding.
A quiet launch with daring ambitions
Thinking Machines Labs was based in February of this yr by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. Since then, she has largely operated in stealth mode, retaining the corporate’s plans undisclosed.
“We’re building multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world,” Murati lastly revealed on July 16 on a publish on X. “Through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate.”
Record-breaking funding
While the corporate maintained a low profile to develop its AI platform, it concurrently secured funding behind the scenes. Silicon Valley enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz led the $2 billion seed spherical, in keeping with CNBC.
“To accelerate our progress, we’re happy to confirm that we’ve raised $2B led by a16z with participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, Jane Street and more who share our mission,” Murati stated in her publish, acknowledging the businesses that participated within the seed spherical.
The deal can be outstanding because it’s one of many largest first funding rounds within the historical past of Silicon Valley, as first famous by TechCrunch. In June, Thinking Machine Labs was reportedly valued at $10 billion, with out having launched a product, in keeping with Financial Times.
Looking forward: Open supply and AI entry
The unprecedented fundraise underscores traders’ eagerness to again the subsequent main contender in AI. Murati wrote that her firm would be capable to share its new product “in the next couple months” and “will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom models.”
This large funding in a promising startup might assist Thinking Machine Labs compete with AI mannequin builders immediately, comparable to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, which have a stranglehold on the AI frontier.
“We believe AI should serve as an extension of individual agency and, in the spirit of freedom, be distributed as widely and equitably as possible,” Murati added.
Curious how tech titans are reshaping the AI race? Explore our report on Microsoft’s file AI investments and what they imply for the way forward for machine studying.
