Can a $2 billion funding round be a seed?
This once-preposterous notion became a little less far-fetched on Thursday with the report that former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has doubled the amount of funding she’s seeking to raise for her startup Thinking Machines Lab, with the target now set at $2 billion.
The report, by Business Insider and based on anonymous sources, did not cite a valuation and noted that details could change. Given that Murati’s startup is only a few months old (she left OpenAI in September), it’s fair to wonder what’s true, what’s wishful thinking, and what’s reality. (Thinking Machines Lab declined comment for this story.)
Though Murati’s fundraising process has attracted circus scrutiny, we know very little about what Thinking Machines Lab is actually doing. The startup’s website says that the company’s mission is to "make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable," emphasizing research, multimodality, and safety. What we do know: Murati’s team includes coveted names from OpenAI’s recent past, including advisers Alec Radford and Bob McGrew, and OpenAI cofounder John Schulman (now Thinking Machines Lab’s chief scientist).
If Murati does raise more than $1 billion for her startup out of the gate, it won’t be entirely without precedent: In 2024, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever completed a $1 billion seed raise for his new startup, Safe Superintelligence, which has reportedly reached a $30 billion valuation.
Like "jumbo shrimp" and "living dead," a multi-billion seed round has an oxymoronic quality to it. But that oxymoron does get at the key tension that Murati and Sutskever ultimately face—something so new has to become so big in order to live up to expectations (and venture math).
This is actually part of a wider tension across venture, one that transcends even the AI boom—as more capital flows through the system and valuations get higher, exit expectations get higher too. And in recent years, those exit expectations haven’t been met, with a few home run anomalies.
But as more capital has run through the system, seed rounds have gotten steadily bigger over time. It’s a trend that the AI boom has highlighted, but certainly didn’t start. In 2015, the largest seed deal was for femtech pharma startup Addyi, clocking in at $50 million, according to PitchBook. In 2025 so far, PitchBook names Lila Sciences as the largest closed seed deal—at $200 million. A mega-seed, by the way, seems to be a mildly cursed thing. Looking at PitchBook’s list, there were a few companies I’d never heard of, and some famous flops, like Quibi, which raised more than $1 billion before its ill-fated launch.
So, it’s worth being clear: A $2 billion seed round amid sweeping economic volatility could be totally crazy, if true. But beyond its veracity, I think the theoretical mega-seed does pose an important question: What does it mean to bet that a company will thrive amid chaos? What does it actually look like when that happens? In what we all know is an understatement—it’s not a great moment of economic stability. And that is bigger than tech, and also applies directly to tech. For example, there’s evidence that Trump’s tariffs (paused though they may be) could create pressure on the AI boom very directly.
But history shows knockout wins are possible even in the most impossible of times. Take 2008: The biggest IPO in that famously difficult year was Visa, which chose to go public even after the depths of the financial crisis were clear. The company popped on its first day of trading, raising about $17 billion in its public markets debut. In 2008, Visa’s market cap was $45 billion and literature from the time credits the company’s focus on payments rather than lending for its resilience through the Great Recession.
Now, 17 years later, Visa’s market cap lingers around $634 billion. In short, Visa survived and thrived because it focused on something enduring and different. We don’t yet know exactly what that will look like for AI, but Murati seemingly has a shot to figure it out.
And if Murati does raise a $2 billion seed fund, we’ll be forced to ponder the oxymoron of an AI bubble that’s alive and well, on the eve of what may very well be a bona fide recession.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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