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Mira Murati's AI startup Thinking Machines raises $2B in A16Z-led round

https://www.reuters.com/technology/mira-muratis-ai-startup-thinking-machines-raises-2-billion-a16z-led-round-2025-07-15/
62•spenvo•6h ago

Comments

eschneider•6h ago
So novel, they couldn't even come up with an original name.
gjvc•6h ago
Bet they've never heard of it
margalabargala•6h ago
To be fair the other Thinking Machines has been defunct over 30 years.

That said, what was left of the old one was bought by Sun, which is now owned by Oracle.

I wonder if they still own rights to the name? Not the wisest move to name your new company after something owned by the most famously litigious tech corporation.

eddieh•5h ago
Yet the Jurassic Park franchise is just as strong as ever.

Thinking Machines CM-5 in Jurassic Park (1993):

https://www.starringthecomputer.com/appearance.html?f=11&c=1...

Jurassic World Rebirth passes $500 M in revenue:

https://www.koimoi.com/box-office/jurassic-world-rebirth-wor...

6177c40f•5h ago
Fun fact, in the novel the computers were Cray X-MPs (sadly Cray is now semi-defunct, since they were bought and merged into HPE) [1].

[1] https://cray-history.net/2023/08/20/cray-systems-in-popular-...

dibujaron•3h ago
Thinking Machines was chosen over the Cray because they had more visual appeal. Sheryl Handler the CEO had (has) a real flair for and it showed; they were neat looking machines
boznz•3h ago
Maybe the new company should consider something like this for the next investor show and tell

https://rodyne.com/?p=1674

riffic•2h ago
what? Cray machines were pretty rad looking in their own way.
CamperBob2•1h ago
They were, but they didn't blink.
eddieh•1h ago
The Cray machines looked more like an airport seating area. Or with later models, obstacles in a laser tag arena. While the Thinking Machines with the moving LEDs looked alive, almost like it was designed to be a character in a movie, which they became.
bbor•4h ago
Fascinating question! I can't find any mention of this seemingly obvious issue.

Here's[1][2] their trademark application from February, which is still "NOT ASSIGNED". Technically it's for their logotype but I imagine it's all the same issue, considering that they include "Computer hardware" in the description of their company (which is exactly what the old one did). This site ominously says that the only action since the filing date was on June 5th, titled "LETTER OF PROTEST EVIDENCE FORWARDED" -- perhaps that's Oracle?

I think this[4] is the trademark for the original's ("Thinking Machines Corporation") trademark logotype, first used in 1987 and defunct ("cancelled"?) by 1999. Another site[5] lists three other "Dead/Cancelled" trademarks owned by the original, and two more recent attempts by randos in 2006 and 2010 that were both shot down.

Technically they're "Thinking Machine Lab Inc."[3], but they're basically always referred to without the "Lab", even to the point of using thinkingmachines.ai as their domain (which, hilariously, doesn't use their trademarked logotype). Another goofy tidbit is that they also filed a trademark for a serif logotype of the words "BEEP BOOP"[6] -- maybe that's their fallback name!

Would be fascinated to hear from anyone familiar with US trademark law on what might be going on, and how we might see what the "LETTER OF PROTEST" is! My layperson understanding would definitely tell me that Oracle would maintain the trademarks, but perhaps they were forced to let them lapse due to lack of use?

I've been slowly building (y'know how it is...) a (one-man...) company filed as "Doering Thinking Machines, LLC" for a few years (named after an old family business, "Doering Machines"), so I'm quite interested to see how this shakes out!

[1] https://furm.com/trademarks/thinking-machines-99054776

[2] For the love of god, please HN gods, just make these comments markdown. IDK what battle you're fighting but it's a baffling one. The lack of blockquotes is painful, but the lack of inline links is downright diabolical! You have three people now, you can afford the effort ;)

[3] https://trademarks.justia.com/741/37/thinking-machines-74137...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab

[5] https://uspto.report/TM/99051772

[6] https://trademarks.justia.com/990/71/beep-99071391.html

mrandish•2h ago
I really hope these seemingly experienced entrepreneurs got the trademark sorted out and locked down before adopting it. Otherwise it may be an expensive lesson.

IANAL but I do know trademarking a logotype is a kind of 'trade dress' that's not the same trademarking the words of the name (even if those words appear\ in the logotype).

dboreham•4h ago
One would imagine they already thought of that. There are at least two people at a16z old enough to know about the original TM.
aswanson•6h ago
Maybe it's a throwback fashion statement.
k2enemy•5h ago
I guess "random and pleasing" is appropriate for both CM-5s and LLMs.
beauzero•5h ago
Does anybody know what they are building yet?
wubrr•5h ago
hype
throwoutway•4h ago
This is what I expect. Theyre Not hiring even engineers. By the time they have a strategy, plan, hire, and act on that plan they will be behind the curve, and force to use the $ to acquire someone who did.
leesec•4h ago
This is wrong. they have strong engineering and a product coming this year
dttze•4h ago
While you are seeing in to the future, can you tell me the Powerball numbers?
boshalfoshal•3h ago
Well this is blatantly false, she linked the career page and I know of people that received offers recently.

They have very strong talent from Meta's FAIR/Pytorch teams as well as a lot of strong people from OAI.

red2awn•5h ago
It is literally in the article:

> "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post on the X social media platform.

Kranar•5h ago
What are they building?
danielmarkbruce•4h ago
A big, beautiful... thing.
beardedetim•3h ago
they have concepts of a product
dmbche•4h ago
Is there a word (like aphorism or metaphor) for someone trying to prove a point and doing the opposite? There just has to be.
dvfjsdhgfv•4h ago
"You've just proved my point" is enough.
fanf2•5h ago
A a supercomputer with 65536 processors and a 16 dimensional hypercube interconnect, in a black monolithic enclosure with red blinkenlights.
mlnj•4h ago
Gavin Belson Signature Edition Box 1
apwell23•2h ago
why are you giving away the joke
ks2048•4h ago
"it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals".

If only I had had that idea, maybe I could have raised $2B.

satyrun•1h ago
I am working on a pitch deck for a startup that is going to build language models that aren't just safe and reliable but they are actually CONSCIOUS.

consciousmachines.ai

Such an obvious next step. Conscious, ethical, inclusive machines.

bgnn•3h ago
More of the same it seems. How can you deliver a product within 2 months of there is anything novel.
qoez•5h ago
I need to get around to betting against this on prediction markets soon.
leesec•4h ago
Wouldn't overlook this company, they manage to bring over a good deal of top talent from OpenAI including John Schulman
lenerdenator•4h ago
> "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post, opens new tab on the X social media platform.

We need to jack up interest rates again.

codingwagie•3h ago
hahaha
pdabbadabba•4h ago
Could somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines in this thread? I realize that they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building, and they have some pretty significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself. Some amount of skepticism is warranted, of course, but a lot of these comments read as closer to hostility.
bossyTeacher•3h ago
Because it looks like VC are spendings ridicoulous amounts of money for hype while many startups with actual products and a product market fit struggle to attract investors because their product is not related to transformers.
riku_iki•3h ago
> but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building

you imply that VCs are rational because bet their own money, which in current complicated world probably is not true. VC funds get money from complicated funnel likely including my/your retirement account and country public debt, VC managers likely receive bonuses for closed deals and not long term gains which may materialize in 10 years. So, investing 2B into non-existing product with unclear market fit/team/tech moat smells very strongly.

cheema33•3h ago
> you imply that VCs are rational because bet their own money, which in current complicated world probably is not true.

Correct. Most VCs are using someone else's money. See Softbank. And making extremely poor judgements on how to use that money.

MaxPock•3h ago
No one needs another mistral
apwell23•2h ago
> Could somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines

> significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself.

because ppl on this website don't consider her a 'talent'.

myth_drannon•3h ago
Well, if you have to pay $200 million to a top AI engineer, $2B is a very short runway for a startup.
erulabs•2h ago
I think it takes a lot of temerity and hubris to look at a 2B raise and assume it's all hype. A16Z has certainly had some misses, but one assumes there actually is some product they're showing behind closed doors that makes this round much more reasonable than it appears from the outside.

If something makes no sense, seems totally crazy, and is being done by a crowd of extremely smart people, you can only assume one of two things: they are actually crazy and frittering away 2B on hype or, just maybe, there's something we're not aware of. If there are only two camps: optimistic and naive or pessimistic and dismissive, I'll choose naive every day of the week.

Anyways, congrats to Thinking Machines and here's hoping they do have something awesome up their sleeve!

reactordev•1h ago
Oh it’s going to get exciting indeed!

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