With the markets in freefall and few exits to be discovered, it appears not possible 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 may very well 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 might sound 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 evident. And along with Murati herself, the Pondering Machines group 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 quick tenure at Anthropic, jumped ship particularly to group 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 techniques extra broadly 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 concerning the state of the AI bubble, particularly amid the unstable financial local weather created by Trump’s tariffs.
Some observers have questioned if the AI growth has peaked, with Wall Road’s blended response to the CoreWeave IPO and Microsoft’s current pullback on various its AI infrastructure initiatives. VCs, moreover, are getting squeezed, as a dearth of exits is making it more durable to lift cash from LPs.
So if Pondering Machines does draw $2 billion from traders, it’ll be a powerful sign that the AI growth nonetheless has severe legs. And, after all, AI bulls will argue that $2 billion is a drop within the bucket in comparison with the corporate’s sweeping potential.
However it’s additionally essential to consider this in a context past the AI growth—seed rounds have been getting steadily greater over time, and AI’s huge improvement prices have solely kicked that pattern 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, in line with PitchBook. In 2025 to this point, 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 occasions and a testomony to the high-octane curiosity in Murati herself—but it surely’s additionally a pattern far previous our present financial whirlwind.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
