Accel reportedly in talks to lead $1B Thinking Machines round at $40B valuation

Thinking Machines, the AI lab founded early last year by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in discussions to raise $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion. Existing backer Accel is reportedly in talks to lead the fundraise. The round has not been completed, and Accel and Thinking Machines did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thinking Machines’ annual revenue run rate stands at over $100 million, according to a source cited in the report. At that level, a $40 billion valuation would represent an extraordinarily high revenue multiple. For investors and startup watchers, the key question is whether the company’s product momentum can support that scale of pricing.

In July, Thinking Machines introduced Inkling, an open-weight model tied to usage-based compute fees for adapting models on proprietary data through its Tinker platform. That gives the company a clearer revenue mechanism than pure research alone. Readers should watch how much demand emerges for model adaptation on proprietary data, because that appears central to the company’s commercial story.

The new round, if completed, would value the company below the $50 billion valuation Thinking Machines reportedly sought late last year. Its prior fundraise was a $2 billion round, described as among the largest seed financings in history, valuing the company at $12 billion and led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners. The company has also seen high-profile departures, including co-founders Lilian Weng and Luke Metz returning to OpenAI.