Thinking Machines Lab is an AI research and product company that came out of stealth on February 18, 2025, founded by Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI. Its team includes researchers who previously worked on widely used systems such as ChatGPT and Character.AI and on open-source projects including PyTorch.
The company’s stated mission is to “make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable,” noting that “knowledge of how these systems are trained is concentrated within the top research labs.” Rather than focusing only on fully autonomous systems, it says it is building “multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively” that extend “to the full spectrum of human expertise.” It commits to publishing technical blog posts, papers, and code frequently, and pairs proactive safety research with real-world testing.
The lab raised a large early funding round at a multibillion-dollar valuation before shipping a product, and later released developer tools such as an API for fine-tuning language models.
Why business readers should care: Thinking Machines Lab is part of a 2024-2025 wave of well-funded labs founded by departing senior leaders of the major AI companies. Its emphasis on customization, openness, and human-collaborative systems positions it as a differentiated alternative to the closed, autonomy-first frontier labs.