Mira Murati, the former CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and interim CEO of OpenAI, after leaving her old company has now pulled off one of the recent AI history’s most audacious funding, $2 billion. What’s quite interesting is that she has raised this funding in the pre-revenue phase of her newly launched company “Thinking Machines Lab”.

Securing this giant of a funding before launching a single product speaks volumes about how seriously Silicon Valley takes Mira Murati.

Strategic Positioning Against OpenAI

Last September, Mira Murati left OpneAI, saying that she was stepping down “to create the time and space to do my own exploration, I bet now we know the kind of exploration she meant by that. The timing of this is note-worthy because OpenAi was doubling down on closed sourced and proprietary models.

In contrast, Murati has envisioned building her own firm as a public centric AI company, positioning Machine Labs as the anti-OpenAI, promising “distributed” AI that serves “individual agency” rather than corporate control. 

One may think this move is just an idealistic component of her commitment to open source AI, but it’s also smart business.

The star-studded Investor Lineup

Those behind Murati’s audacious move are the ones making her investor’s lineup a “who is who” of AI infrastructure. With Andreessen Horowitz of AH Capital Management, LLC in the lead, along with Nvidia, AMD, and enterprise giants like ServiceNow and Cisco backing her vision, the investors’ lineup feels like a startstudded ensemble that could be any competitor’s nightmare.

The Insider Advantage

How is this AI launch particularly significant in competition with OpenAI? Murati didn’t just work at OpenAI. She also held the position of interim CEO, while the company went through the entire Sam Altman chaos. This gave her insider knowledge of the company’s strengths and the blind spots as well. 

Her focus on “natural interaction” through conversation and sight suggests she’s targeting the usability gap that still plagues most AI tools.

A Categorical Challenge to OpenAI

Murati wasn’t simply another executive employee of OpenAI. She was among the “blood and spirit” ones of the company. Likewise, launching a competing AI company is not just another competitor for OpenAI, it’s one of their own playing upon their weaknesses.

While Google and Anthropic compete on model capabilities, Thinking Machines is positioning itself as the democratic alternative; open source, distributed, and user-empowered.

The Big Question

With $2 billion in the bank and a star cast of AI infrastructure backing her vision, it is yet to be seen whether Murati translates OpenAI experience into something that genuinely competes with her former employer? 

The answer to this will soon be unveiled when Murati launches her first product in a couple of months’ time.