Forget OpenAI. Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Just Secured a Historic Nvidia Deal |
Forget OpenAI. Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Just Secured a Historic Nvidia Deal
The former OpenAI CTO just secured billions of dollars worth of chips for Thinking Machines.
BY BEN SHERRY, STAFF REPORTER @BENLUCASSHERRY
Mira Murati. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Getty Images
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup from former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, has signed a sweeping deal with Nvidia to use its next-generation chips to train and power customized AI models. Nvidia also said it made “a significant investment” in the startup.
In a statement, Thinking Machines and Nvidia said that they had inked “a multi-year strategic partnership to deploy at least one gigawatt of next-generation Nvidia Vera Rubin systems to support Thinking Machines’ frontier model training and platforms delivering customizable AI at scale.”
The announcement comes following a period of turmoil for Thinking Machines. In January, Murati fired cofounder Barret Zoph, reportedly for having a relationship with an employee. But immediately after his firing, Zoph and several other Thinking Machines employees secured new jobs at OpenAI.
So far, Thinking Machines’ only product is an API service called Tinker. The Tinker API enables developers to more easily customize and fine-tune AI models for specific use cases. The company is expected to release more products, all themed around the idea of customizable models, in the near future.
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Thinking Machines says that it will begin deploying the next-gen Nvidia chips in early 2027. The two companies will also collaborate on a new initiative to “design training and serving systems for Nvidia architectures and broaden access to frontier AI and open models for enterprises, research institutions, and the scientific community.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Thinking Machines already uses Nvidia to develop models, but “the new partnership further cements the startup as a customer.”
Along with the chips, Nvidia said that it had made a “significant investment in Thinking Machines Lab to support the company’s long-term growth.” The Financial Times reported that the chip supply deal is worth “tens of billions of dollars.”
Murati was reportedly a key figure in the November 2023 attempted ousting of Sam Altman from OpenAI, and was briefly elevated to OpenAI’s CEO before Altman was reinstated. She left OpenAI in September 2024, and launched Thinking Machines in February 2025. Last year, Murati turned down an acquisition offer from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
In a statement, Murati wrote that “this partnership accelerates our capacity to build AI that people can shape and make their own, as it shapes human potential in turn.”
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