Thinking Machines Lab reportedly nears a $5B round at a $40B valuation
Business Insider reported November 6 that Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is closing in on a $5 billion funding round led by Accel at a $40 billion pre-money valuation — more than triple the $12 billion valuation on its July 2025 seed round. The round is reported, not announced: the lab declined to comment and Accel did not respond.
📊 Scorecard: our Bullish call on $NVDA is scored from $186.64, the last close before it ran. Its first result comes after the next close.
The News
Business Insider reported on November 6 that Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is closing in on a $5 billion funding round led by Accel at a $40 billion pre-money valuation — about $45 billion once the new money is counted. The deal could close within days, according to the report. That is more than three times the $12 billion valuation on the lab's $2 billion seed round in July 2025 — but below the $50 billion it sought in talks last year that were abandoned.
The round is reported, not announced. Thinking Machines declined to comment and Accel did not respond, so the terms rest on Business Insider's account, which cited multiple people familiar with the matter. A pre-money valuation is what a company is worth before new investment is added; post-money is the value after it. Nothing here is confirmed by the company, and this story says "reported" throughout for that reason.
The lab is not just raising money. On November 5 it shipped Inkling 2 Small, a 594-billion-parameter model built to run AI training jobs, with full weights promised under the Apache 2.0 open licence the following week after safety testing. A parameter is a number the model tunes as it learns; 594 billion of them makes this a very large model. Its Tinker fine-tuning platform — the tool that lets developers adapt a model to their own data — also shipped an SDK update on November 5 (version 0.38.0), the same day Inkling 2 Small launched on Tinker.
A $40 billion reported valuation would more than triple Thinking Machines' $12 billion seed valuation — but the round is reported, not announced.
Why It Matters
A $40 billion valuation for a lab that has shipped two public models and is barely a year past its seed round says the market is pricing talent and compute, not revenue. Mira Murati ran product at OpenAI before founding Thinking Machines, and investors are betting that her team can build frontier models from scratch. Accel, the firm reported to be leading the round, has backed some of the biggest names in software, and its name on the deal would signal that the round is priced by conviction rather than hype. The $5 billion round, if it closes, would be one of the largest private AI raises ever — money that mostly buys the computing power to train models like Inkling 2 Small.
That is where Nvidia comes in. Thinking Machines is private, so there is no stock to buy; Nvidia is named only as a public read-through — the company that sells the chips behind the training runs. Every billion raised by a frontier lab is, in practice, a purchase order for compute, and Nvidia closed Friday at $186.64, up 2.78%, with the Nasdaq up 1.09% at 24,579.42. The catch is the caveat: until the round is announced, $40 billion is a report, not a fact.
Analyst's Take
Our call is Bullish. The numbers tell the story even with the caveat: a valuation more than tripling in sixteen months, a 594-billion-parameter model shipped in the same week, and a $5 billion round led by a top-tier firm. The Inkling 2 Small shipment matters because it is evidence, not a pitch: a lab that ships a large model and promises open weights is showing its work, and open weights let outsiders test the claims. The abandoned $50 billion talks last year show the lab has already walked away from a higher price once — which makes the $40 billion figure more credible, not less.
What to watch: whether the round is announced within days, as reported, and at what terms; whether Inkling 2 Small's open weights land next week as promised; and whether the valuation holds when the market gets to price it. If the deal closes at $40 billion, Thinking Machines becomes one of the most valuable private AI companies in the world — and the compute bill behind it keeps flowing to Nvidia.
Are you bullish or bearish on this story?
By The Numbers
FAQ
Is the $5 billion round confirmed?
No. Business Insider reported it on November 6, citing multiple people familiar with the matter, but Thinking Machines declined to comment and Accel did not respond. The terms — $5 billion at a $40 billion pre-money valuation — rest on that report, and this story says "reported" throughout for that reason.
What do pre-money and post-money mean?
Pre-money is what a company is worth before new investment is added; post-money is the value after it. A $40 billion pre-money valuation plus a $5 billion round gives about a $45 billion post-money valuation.
How fast has Thinking Machines' valuation risen?
Very fast. The lab was valued at $12 billion on its $2 billion seed round in July 2025. A $40 billion pre-money valuation would be more than triple that in about sixteen months — but it is still below the $50 billion the lab sought in talks last year that were abandoned.
What is Inkling 2 Small?
A model the lab shipped on November 5, built to run AI training jobs — the heavy computing work of teaching a model. It has 594 billion parameters, the numbers a model tunes as it learns, and uses a mixture-of-experts design, meaning only part of the model works on any given task. Full weights were promised under the Apache 2.0 open licence the following week, after safety testing.
Thinking Machines is private — why does this carry a ticker?
Because Nvidia is named only as a public read-through: the company that sells the chips behind the training runs. Every billion raised by a frontier lab is, in practice, a purchase order for computing power. Nvidia closed Friday at $186.64, up 2.78%.
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Source: Business Insider via SiliconANGLE