Mira Murati's Thinking Machines seeks $50B valuation in funding talks (www.reuters.com)

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup led by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, is in early talks to raise a new funding round at an eye‑popping valuation of roughly $50 billion — and potentially as high as $55–60 billion — according to media reports. The company was valued at $12 billion in July after a $2 billion raise. Terms are not finalized and could change. The move follows recent leadership shifts (co‑founder Andrew Tulloch reportedly left for Meta) and the October launch of Tinker, a product designed to help teams fine‑tune large language models. For the AI/ML community this signals continuing investor appetite for companies that offer model tooling and operational infrastructure rather than just model IP. A multibillion‑dollar uplift implies expectations that fine‑tuning, model customization and developer ergonomics will be major value drivers — and that Thinking Machines’ stack and go‑to‑market could scale rapidly. Practically, a large raise would accelerate hiring, compute procurement and product development, intensifying competition for talent and cloud/GPU capacity and potentially widening gaps between well‑funded tooling players and smaller labs. The report underscores both the pace of capital flowing into AI and the commercial importance of tooling that makes large models more adaptable and productive.