With the markets in freefall and few exits to be discovered, it appears inconceivable proper now to scrounge collectively $2 billion. Until, maybe, you’re Mira Murati.
Murati, the previous CTO of OpenAI, began her Pondering Machines Lab shortly after leaving OpenAI final fall, and the fundraising course of for the corporate has been adopted with horse race depth.
The newest: Enterprise Insider reported Murati’s AI startup is seeking to increase a $2 billion seed spherical. If true, it’s a jarring quantity, representing what might be the most important seed spherical in tech historical past. Given the investor frenzy for AI — and for AI startups with a sure pedigree particularly — the large quantity will not be as implausible because it may appear at first blush.
Take, for instance, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever’s $1 billion seed increase for his new startup, Protected Superintelligence, which has reportedly reached a monster $30 billion valuation. One other touchpoint: Sierra, the conversational AI agent startup cofounded by Bret Taylor, OpenAI chairman and former Salesforce co-CEO, began in 2023 and final valued at $4.5 billion.
So, the OpenAI title instructions enterprise {dollars}, that a lot is obvious. And along with Murati herself, the Pondering Machines staff is full of OpenAI-drawn expertise, from advisers Alec Radford and Bob McGrew to chief scientist John Schulman. Schulman, the OpenAI cofounder who led the event of ChatGPT, left OpenAI in August, and after an extremely brief tenure at Anthropic, jumped ship particularly to staff up with Murati. (What’s not but clear is what Pondering Machines really does. The web site’s language says the corporate’s purpose is “to make AI programs extra extensively understood, customizable and customarily succesful.”)
The report of the Murati’s mega-seed — Murati and Pondering Machines should not confirming it or commenting — appears sure to reignite the talk in regards to the state of the AI bubble, particularly amid the risky financial local weather created by Trump’s tariffs.
Some observers have puzzled if the AI increase has peaked, with Wall Avenue’s combined response to the CoreWeave IPO and Microsoft’s latest pullback on various its AI infrastructure tasks. VCs, moreover, are getting squeezed, as a dearth of exits is making it harder to lift cash from LPs.
So if Pondering Machines does draw $2 billion from traders, it’ll be a robust sign that the AI increase nonetheless has severe legs. And, in fact, AI bulls will argue that $2 billion is a drop within the bucket in comparison with the corporate’s sweeping potential.
Nevertheless it’s additionally vital to consider this in a context past the AI increase—seed rounds have been getting steadily greater over time, and AI’s large improvement prices have solely kicked that development into high-gear. In 2015, the most important seed deal was for femtech pharma startup Addyi, clocking in at a now paltry-looking $50 million, based on PitchBook. In 2025 up to now, PitchBook names Lila Sciences as the most important closed seed deal—at $200 million.
Seed rounds getting radically greater is each an indication of the instances and a testomony to the high-octane curiosity in Murati herself—nevertheless it’s additionally a development far previous our present financial whirlwind.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
