Mira Murati’s $2 billion seed round inspires female founders

It was the largest seed round ever, in the history of venture capital and startups. It was hardly underreported. And yet, there’s an aspect to this news that hasn’t seemed to have been fully appreciated—just how unlikely, and meaningful, this is for female founders.

Murati is, undoubtedly, in a league of her own as a founder. The Albania-born former CTO of OpenAI, she helped create ChatGPT and start the generative AI revolution. She left OpenAI earlier this year to build her own company. She brought top talent with her; the question everyone wants to know the answer to is what, exactly, she is building.

Not that many details are known about what Thinking Machines is doing. But a source familiar with what Murati is building tells me that it’s creating powerful AI systems capable of tackling the world’s toughest problems—climate change, disease eradication, and more. The company is eager to bring along the world’s smartest people in other fields—like science—rather than only those who work in the AI industry itself, all before AI systems become too powerful for that to matter. And its more open approach is expected to benefit businesses, policymakers, and others.

But Thinking Machines is entering the game late, hence the $2 billion: it needs compute and talent to compete with the AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google that have a years-long head start.

In an environment where startups with at least woman on the founding team took in $38 billion in funding last year—and those founded solely by women earned 2.1% of VC dollars, for a total sum of $3.7 billion, across about 800 deals—the $2 billion number is extraordinary.

A report released by Female Founders Fund and Inc. last week showed what women are doing with the paltry share of venture funding they are getting; last year women were responsible for 24% of exits. They put capital to work more efficiently, earning 78 cents of revenue for every dollar raised, compared to 31 cents at male-founded startups.

So imagine what will be possible with $2 billion—and a generational founder at the helm. Known investors in the company include Accel, AMD, Cisco, Jane Street, Nvidia, and ServiceNow. They’re surely expecting their investment to pay off (see: $12 billion valuation). But more important is how Murati and her capital will impact humanity. The true entry of Thinking Machines into the AI race helps diversify the perspectives that will shape the future of our world. And Murati’s achievement lets other women know, in frontier tech and beyond—what seems impossible, can be possible.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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PARTING WORDS

“Feeling lonely doesn’t necessarily mean that something’s wrong. It just means I have to make space for the feeling.”

— Tracee Ellis Ross on her new show about the joys and realities of solo travel