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Former OpenAI CTO's New Startup Secures $2 Billion Funding, Apple and Meta Fail to Invest

22 days ago

Data-labeling startup Thinking Machines Lab (TML), founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has secured a historic $2 billion seed round, attracting interest from giants like Apple and Meta. However, both companies ultimately failed to secure a stake or acquisition. TML’s team includes notable figures like OpenAI’s former research deputy Barret Zoph, former security head Jarno Poydot, and former researcher Luke Metz. Additionally, the company has reached out to early core members of OpenAI, including Alec Radford, one of the creators of GPT-1, and former research manager Bob McGrew. In a sense, TML bears similarities to DeepMind, the AI research lab Google acquired in 2013 for over $650 million. Just as DeepMind initially gathered top PhDs and experts in the UK, TML is assembling a formidable team of researchers and engineers to drive its AI initiatives. Google’s acquisition of DeepMind was driven by the need to strengthen its AI capabilities and compete with other emerging AI labs. Similarly, TML plans to leverage its talent pool to accelerate the development of AI models that can directly impact business operations. The company aims to focus on "reinforcement learning for businesses" (RL for businesses), using its deep expertise to create highly customized AI models. These models will not be general chatbots but will instead optimize specific business metrics such as revenue, profit, and customer conversion rates. By rewarding desired behaviors and penalizing harmful or irrelevant actions during the training process, TML hopes to develop AI tools that can genuinely add value to enterprises. While Google and Apple explored potential investments in or acquisitions of TML, these talks were unsuccessful. Meta, still known as Facebook at the time, also showed interest, but the discussions did not progress. Google is rumored to have provided TML with access to its powerful Google Cloud services, including a large number of high-performance GPUs, to support the company’s computational needs. TML’s approach to developing specialized AI models could significantly shrink the development cycle, making products market-ready much faster. Beyond serving businesses, the company also plans to develop consumer-level applications. Although specific details remain undisclosed, there are indications that TML had considered creating a consumer application to compete with ChatGPT. In summary, TML’s strength lies in its definitive and strategic approach. At a time when AI technology is advancing rapidly, Murati and her team of elite experts are poised to offer a compelling alternative in the AI landscape. The outcome of this substantial $2 billion investment will be closely watched, and we await further developments with anticipation.

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