# Thinking Machines Lab Inc. (B20250068161)

> Thinking Machines Lab Inc. is an American AI research and product company founded in February 2025 by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, focused on making AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable, with flagship products Tinker (fine-tuning API) and Inkling (open-weight LLM).

Company page on Leadbay: https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/company/thinkingmachines.ai · loaded 2026-11-03

## At a glance

- Website: https://thinkingmachines.ai
- Team based in: San Francisco (Leadbay's record and 2 more)
- Founded: 2025 (thinkingmachines.ai and 1 more)
- Founders: John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Lilian Weng, Andrew Tulloch, Luke Metz
- Industry: Technology, Information and Internet
- Employees: 91 (employees and founders, investors not counted; builtinsf.com; Sources disagree: 100 (en.wikipedia.org), 250 (thinkingmachines.ai, a company database))
- Total funding: $3B (thinkingmachines.ai and 1 more)
- Backed by: Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel, Jane Street, ServiceNow, GV, Lightspeed, Conviction Partners, Government of Albania
- Seen in its site's code: Google Workspace (MX alt2.aspmx.l.google.com), DocuSign (TXT docusign=), Zoom (TXT ZOOM_verify) (read 2026-11-03)
- Address: 95 3RD STREET, 2ND FLOOR
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103

## What it sells, to whom

- Thinking Machines Lab Inc. is an American AI research and product company founded in February 2025 by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, focused on making AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable, with flagship products Tinker (fine-tuning API) and Inkling (open-weight LLM). ([thinkingmachines.ai](https://thinkingmachines.ai/), [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-mira-murati-funding/))

## Why it stands out

- Forbes AI 50 (2025 and 2026) ([url3500.trueup.io](https://url3500.trueup.io/co/thinking-machines), [cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/mira-murati-2026-changemaker/), [analyticsindiamag.com](https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news/ex-openai-ctos-startup-has-the-highest-talent-density))
- Forbes Top 250 Living Innovators - Mira Murati (2026, #224) ([url3500.trueup.io](https://url3500.trueup.io/co/thinking-machines), [cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/mira-murati-2026-changemaker/), [analyticsindiamag.com](https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news/ex-openai-ctos-startup-has-the-highest-talent-density))
- Harmonic Hot 25 Startups (2026, #17) ([url3500.trueup.io](https://url3500.trueup.io/co/thinking-machines), [cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/mira-murati-2026-changemaker/), [analyticsindiamag.com](https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news/ex-openai-ctos-startup-has-the-highest-talent-density))
- CNBC Changemaker - Mira Murati (2026) ([url3500.trueup.io](https://url3500.trueup.io/co/thinking-machines), [cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/mira-murati-2026-changemaker/), [analyticsindiamag.com](https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news/ex-openai-ctos-startup-has-the-highest-talent-density))
- Paraform Talent Density Index - #1 (2026) ([url3500.trueup.io](https://url3500.trueup.io/co/thinking-machines), [cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/mira-murati-2026-changemaker/), [analyticsindiamag.com](https://analyticsindiamag.com/ai-news/ex-openai-ctos-startup-has-the-highest-talent-density))
- Competes with: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Mistral AI, Hugging Face, MosaicML/Databricks, DeepSeek, Alibaba (Qwen), Z.ai (Zhipu), MiniMax Group, Xiaomi MiMo, Nvidia (Nemotron) ([research.contrary.com](https://research.contrary.com/company/thinking-machines-lab), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/), [theexpertranking.com](https://theexpertranking.com/providers/thinking-machines/))

## Products and services

- Tinker - API for fine-tuning open-weight language models (launched October 2025) ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune/), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/))
- Inkling - 975B-parameter open-weight multimodal LLM released under Apache License on July 15, 2026 ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune/), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/))
- Inkling Small - distilled 276B-parameter model released July 30, 2026 ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune/), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/))
- Interaction Models - native multimodal architecture for real-time human-AI collaboration ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [wired.com](https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune/), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/))

## Customers and markets

- **Customers**: Princeton University (Gödel Team), Stanford University (Rotskoff Lab), UC Berkeley (SkyRL Lab), Redwood Research, Bridgewater Associates (hedge fund), Together AI, Fireworks, Modal, Databricks, Baseten ([research.contrary.com](https://research.contrary.com/company/thinking-machines-lab), [fortune.com](https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/), [theexpertranking.com](https://theexpertranking.com/providers/thinking-machines/))
- **Markets**: United States (headquarters in San Francisco, primary market) ([firmus.co](https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-multi-year-partnership-to-accelerate-thinking-machines-lab-s-frontier-ai-development), [thinkingmachines.ai](https://thinkingmachines.ai/), [danilchenko.dev](https://www.danilchenko.dev/posts/tml-google-cloud-deal/))
- **Markets**: Asia (anchor customer for Firmus AI-Cloud Region in Asia, based in Sydney) ([firmus.co](https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-multi-year-partnership-to-accelerate-thinking-machines-lab-s-frontier-ai-development), [thinkingmachines.ai](https://thinkingmachines.ai/), [danilchenko.dev](https://www.danilchenko.dev/posts/tml-google-cloud-deal/))

## Team

- Mira Murati, CEO
- John Schulman, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI co-founder
- Barret Zoph, Co-Founder, former OpenAI VP of Research
- Lilian Weng, Co-Founder, former OpenAI VP
- Andrew Tulloch, Co-Founder, former OpenAI pretraining/reasoning
- Luke Metz, Co-Founder, former OpenAI post-training
- Soumith Chintala, Chief Technology Officer
- Andrew Lee, Founding Designer
- Jeana Maute, Deputy General Counsel

Backed by: Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel, Jane Street, ServiceNow, GV, Lightspeed, Conviction Partners, Government of Albania

## Where to find more

- [This page in Markdown, for agents](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/company/thinkingmachines.ai.md)

## Decision makers

- [Mira Murati](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/mira-murati--thinkingmachines.ai.md), CEO
- [John Schulman](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/john-schulman--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI co-founder
- [Barret Zoph](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/barret-zoph--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Co-Founder, former OpenAI VP of Research
- [Lilian Weng](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/lilian-weng--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Co-Founder, former OpenAI VP
- [Andrew Tulloch](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/andrew-tulloch--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Co-Founder, former OpenAI pretraining/reasoning
- [Luke Metz](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/luke-metz--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Co-Founder, former OpenAI post-training
- [Soumith Chintala](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/soumith-chintala--thinkingmachines.ai.md), Chief Technology Officer

Work emails and direct phones come with a Leadbay account: https://wow.leadbay.ai/?register=true

Where it comes from: 15 sites read (thinkingmachines.ai, chatgpt.com, character.ai, mistral.ai, pytorch.org, github.com, en.wikipedia.org, wired.com, …).

## Best angle

2026-07-15 · Expansion: Released Inkling, a 975B-parameter open-weight LLM under Apache License, considered the largest non-Chinese open-weights model (4 sources)

## Signals: what happened

- 2026-11-03 · Headcount: Headcount up 166% in a year (1 source: [A company database](https://thinkingmachines.ai/))
- 2026-09-23 · Fundraising: Signed $65 million annual inference deal with Crusoe for NVIDIA HGX B200 systems (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2026-07-30 · News: Released Inkling Small, a distilled 276B-parameter model (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2026-07-15 · Expansion: Released Inkling, a 975B-parameter open-weight LLM under Apache License, considered the largest non-Chinese open-weights model (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2026-04-01 · Partnership: Partners with Google Cloud for GB300 (Vera Rubin) chip access in a single-digit billion dollar deal (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2026-03-01 · News: Inks massive multi-year compute deal with Nvidia including at least 1 gigawatt of Vera Rubin systems (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2026-01-01 · News: Co-founders Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz left to rejoin OpenAI (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))
- 2025-10-01 · News: Co-founder Andrew Tulloch left for Meta (4 sources: [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab), [techcrunch.com](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/accel-reportedly-in-talks-to-lead-1b-round-for-thinking-machines-at-40b-valuation/), [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-thinking-machines-lab-inference-partnership))

## Working on now

- Building and scaling Tinker, its fine-tuning API for open-weight models, now at a reported US$100M+ revenue run-rate (Sept 2026)
- Released Inkling (975B MoE, 41B active, 1M context) and Inkling-Small (276B MoE, 12B active) open-weights models under Apache 2.0 in July 2026
- Developing interaction models (TML-Interaction-Small) that natively handle live, multimodal (audio, text, video) interaction so people can interrupt and correct AI in real time
- Deploying at least 1GW of NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems under a multi-year strategic partnership announced March 2026
- Expanding into Asia with a multi-year anchor-customer agreement at Firmus AI-Cloud Region (Sydney/Australia) for next-gen model training on NVIDIA GB300
- Signing a $65M annual inference deal with Crusoe to serve production workloads (Inkling, GLM 5.2/5.3) on dedicated NVIDIA HGX B200 clusters
- Signing a multibillion-dollar Google Cloud deal (announced April 22, 2026 at Google Cloud Next) for access to NVIDIA GB300 GPUs
- Acquiring Workshop Labs (April 2026) to expand personalized AI model customization capabilities
- Publishing research and offering safety/interactivity research grants to the community
- Hiring aggressively (~250 employees), with notable recruits including Soumith Chintala (CTO, PyTorch creator) from Meta

From: [Accelerating Thinking Machines Lab’s frontier AI development - Firmus](https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-multi-year-partnership-to-accelerate-thinking-machines-lab-s-frontier-ai-development), [Thinking Machines Lab Hits a US$100m Run Rate on Tinker | AI Magazine](https://aimagazine.com/news/thinking-machines-lab-hits-a-us-100m-run-rate-on-tinker), [Thinking Machines Lab and NVIDIA Announce Long-Term Gigawatt-Scale Strategic Partnership - Thinking Machines Lab](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/nvidia-partnership/), [News - Thinking Machines Lab](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/), [Inkling-Small by Thinking Machines Lab | Specs & Benchmarks | Traictory](https://traictory.com/model/inkling-small), [Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Releases Inkling, a 975B Open-Weight Multimodal Model | MLQ News](https://mlq.ai/news/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-releases-inkling-a-975b-open-weight-multimodal-model/)

## Summary

Thinking Machines Lab (TML) is an AI company founded in February 2025 by former OpenAI executives Mira Murati, John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Lilian Weng, Andrew Tulloch, and Luke Metz [1][2]. Structured as a public benefit corporation, it focuses on building accessible, customizable, and reliable AI systems [3][4]. The company sells Tinker, a managed cloud platform and API for fine-tuning open-weight models [1][3]. Its customers include academic labs (e.g., Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley), research organizations like Redwood Research, and businesses such as Glean, Chroma, and Bridgewater Associates [1][3][5]. TML is backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, Accel, Cisco, AMD, ServiceNow, and Jane Street [4][2]. It currently generates over $100 million in annual revenue run rate from Tinker [3]. Its latest major release is Inkling, an open-weights model launched in July 2026 [3][5].

[1]: https://research.contrary.com/company/thinking-machines-lab "Report: Thinking Machines Lab Business Breakdown & Founding Story | Contrary Research"
[2]: https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-mira-murati-funding/ "Thinking Machines Lab Raises a Record $2 Billion, Announces Cofounders | WIRED"
[3]: https://aimagazine.com/news/thinking-machines-lab-hits-a-us-100m-run-rate-on-tinker "Thinking Machines Lab Hits a US$100m Run Rate on Tinker | AI Magazine"
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/mira-muratis-ai-startup-thinking-machines-raises-2-billion-a16z-led-round-2025-07-15/ "Mira Murati's AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12 billion in early-stage funding | Reuters"
[5]: https://fortune.com/2026/07/15/what-is-mira-murati-thinking-machines-first-ai-model-inkling/ "Murati’s Thinking Machines releases first AI model for broad use | Fortune"
[6]: https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/thinking-machines-lab-seeks-40-billion-dollar-valuation/ "PYMNTS | Thinking Machines Lab Seeks $1 Billion at $40 Billion Valuation"
[7]: https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/nvidia-partnership/ "Thinking Machines Lab and NVIDIA Announce Long-Term Gigawatt-Scale Strategic Partnership - Thinking Machines Lab"
[8]: https://www.wired.com/story/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune/ "Exclusive: Mira Murati’s Stealth AI Lab Launches Its First Product | WIRED"

## Sources

- [Thinking Machines Lab Inc. (B20250068161)'s website](https://thinkingmachines.ai)
- [Company record, via Exa](https://thinkingmachines.ai/)
- [Accelerating Thinking Machines Lab’s frontier AI development - Firmus](https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-multi-year-partnership-to-accelerate-thinking-machines-lab-s-frontier-ai-development)
- [News - Thinking Machines Lab](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/)
- [Inkling-Small by Thinking Machines Lab | Specs & Benchmarks | Traictory](https://traictory.com/model/inkling-small)
- [Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Releases Inkling, a 975B Open-Weight Multimodal Model | MLQ News](https://mlq.ai/news/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-releases-inkling-a-975b-open-weight-multimodal-model/)
- [Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Signs Multibillion-Dollar Google Cloud Deal](https://laffaz.com/mira-murati-thinking-machines-lab-google-cloud-deal/)
- [Meta's loss is Thinking Machines' gain | TechCrunch](https://hongkongseafood.space/2026/04/24/metas-loss-is-thinking-machines-gain/)
- [Mira Murati's AI Governance Warning at Bloomberg Tech 2026](https://newsanalysis.net/mira-murati-ai-governance-institutional-design-bloomberg-tech/)
- [Mira Murati and Thinking Machines: A New Era of Human-AI Collaboration – Frank's World of Data Science & AI](http://www.franksworld.com/2026/06/10/mira-murati-and-thinking-machines-a-new-era-of-human-ai-collaboration/)
- [Thinking Machines Acquires Workshop Labs for AI Customizatio | Phemex News](https://phemex.com/news/article/thinking-machines-acquires-workshop-labs-to-enhance-ai-customization-73106)
- [Thinking Machines Acquires Personalized AI Startup Workshop Labs | KuCoin](https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/thinking-machines-acquires-personalized-ai-startup-workshop-labs)
- [Thinking Machines Lab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab)
- [Thinking Machines Lab - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/thinking-machines-lab)