Albanian AI genius' startup hits $10 billion valuation without a product or strategy

Mira Murati just closed a $2 billion seed round for her new AI company, Thinking Machines Lab, pushing its valuation to $10 billion, even though the company’s only been alive for six months and hasn’t shared anything about what it’s building.

The deal just wrapped up, and people directly involved reportedly say it’s one of the largest early-stage rounds ever done in Silicon Valley. That’s not just rare. That’s almost unheard of.

The startup, based in San Francisco, hasn’t launched a product, released a prototype, or even given investors a roadmap.

Still, the round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with backing from Sarah Guo through her firm Conviction Partners, according to the Financial Times. No business model, no demo, no forecast — just Mira and her reputation. And somehow, that was enough.

Mira is originally from Albania. At OpenAI, as CTO, Mira led work on ChatGPT, the Dall-E image tool, and the newer voice features that were added right before she left. Before that, she was at Tesla, managing product for the Model X. She didn’t go quietly either.

Despite no product, no pitch deck, and no actual tech revealed, Mira raised billions. She didn’t even pretend to share financials. One investor told Financial Times she didn’t explain the company’s financial plan or business structure during the pitch. Another one who passed said the whole thing was “too secretive.”

So far, Thinking Machines Lab hasn’t said when it will release anything or what its first project will be. The only thing it has shown the public is Mira’s name, her team of ex-OpenAI talent, and now, a $2 billion runway to figure the rest out. Investors who didn’t join said they needed more details. But the ones who backed it clearly didn’t care.

I do not know much about why AI programs are considered to be so valuable. But I have been using them recently mostly for fun, but also for setting up my low budget “home lab” server project.

Grok and and ChatGP are especially helpful when you want to accomplish something using the command line in various Linux distributions or doing work with Docker Desktop. You can copy and paste commands directly into your Linux terminal and it saves a lot of time.

But I have had a lot of fun with video and image creation and music generation. I have a couple of scratch pad rudimentary WordPress sites up that I share with my friends and family. They are completely and totally just for fun.

Here is one with music and images dedicated to our big, long haired ginger cat, Teddy

https://teddycat.fun/

Here is another with moving images made from old black and white photos of our family. There are also the historical figures Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln who have been brought back to life. And of course there are some cartoon short clips from AI generated images. There is a warning that comes up on some browsers next to the https address that says the site is “not secure” because of the media player I am currently using with it.

https://gizmotips.com/

I couldn’t care less if people look them over or not, but some people find them amusing.

This image appears to strongly resemble every AI image at the top of all the stories written by AI. They all look like this.

Is this even a real person? Have doubts. Ten billion dollars freshly laundered maybe . . . Hmm.

CGI. AI. Hmm.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.