Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 260 posts

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#211

Post by belter »

dubeye wrote: post #205
JCM9 wrote: post #171

On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…

Whenever I hear someone say this I file them under 'techie with no business sense or appreciation of user value'

Will file your comment under: People who forget VCs regularly burn hundreds of millions of other people’s money, chasing hype. Also...90% of startups, and that is what Thinking Machines is, fail.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#212

Post by Erem »

JCM9 wrote: post #171

On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…

Business plan, revenue, people: these are all valid signals to form an investment hypothesis. People often outweighs all others wrt early stage companies.

You would have been a fool to invest in apple in the late 90s on any other signal than the return of Steve Jobs. That era created many rich fools.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#213

Post by mv4 »

belter wrote: post #202
silveraxe93 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's actually that easy, why don't you do it? Are you seriously just leaving $5 billion on the table? I'll tell you why you won't. Because you wouldn't get it. Because it's not that easy. Mira Murati is not some rando off the street. Ilya Sutskever is not some rando. Zuckerberg is not paying Millions to randos of the street to come work for meta.

Tell me one unique skill, from any of those individuals you quoted, that is worth even 0,01% of $5 billion, for a non existent company with a non existent product.

It's not a particular skill, it's the experience of having worked with certain people at well-funded and rapidly growing companies.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#214

Post by mv4 »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #186
JCM9 wrote: post #171

On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…

If it's actually that easy, why don't you do it? Are you seriously just leaving $5 billion on the table? I'll tell you why you won't. Because you wouldn't get it. Because it's not that easy. Mira Murati is not some rando off the street. Ilya Sutskever is not some rando. Zuckerberg is not paying Millions to randos of the street to come work for meta.

Exactly, it's not what, it's who.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#215

Post by FL33TW00D »

belter wrote: post #202
silveraxe93 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's actually that easy, why don't you do it? Are you seriously just leaving $5 billion on the table? I'll tell you why you won't. Because you wouldn't get it. Because it's not that easy. Mira Murati is not some rando off the street. Ilya Sutskever is not some rando. Zuckerberg is not paying Millions to randos of the street to come work for meta.

Tell me one unique skill, from any of those individuals you quoted, that is worth even 0,01% of $5 billion, for a non existent company with a non existent product.

Please investigate the team she has assembled and it will be clear $5B isn't outside the realms of reality.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#216

Post by kirubakaran »

JCM9 wrote: post #171

On Shark Tank if you walk in and say “I have no revenue, no viable business model, and an idea that’s easily copied in a space that’s rapidly marching towards commoditization. I’m asking for $5 billion for 25% of my company.” You’d be laughed off the set. In the increasingly frothy world of GenAI that’s a Wednesday and you get the cheque. If it looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… The tech is cool, but inves…

(Setting the current example aside...)

When proposing a model for evaluating startup investments -- or any decision-making framework -- it’s useful to run a kind of regression test.

Would Shark Tank have funded the most successful startups of the past decade? In many cases, no. They famously passed on companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Dropbox early on (sometimes indirectly via pitch decks or missed introductions), and even directly rejected DoorDash and Cameo, both of which went on to become unicorns. In other cases, they offered terms that, if accepted, would likely have made follow-on funding difficult.

That doesn't mean every GenAI deal today is wise. But pointing to Shark Tank as a benchmark for rational investing is a very selective filter. Historically, it’s missed more home runs than it’s hit.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#218

Post by never_inline »

TrackerFF wrote: post #161
bluelightning2k wrote: post #145

This is so weird to me. Yes, she was there at OpenAI and by all accounts a super respected non researcher . Clearly she's incredible, her reputation proceeds her etc. but is operational strength (being a good exec) really what gets to AGI? Feels almost like cargo-culting.

IIRC, she was the driving force behind ChatGPT - the product, that is. Arguably the most successful AI/LLM product. Maybe the product she’s pitched has massive commercial potential.

What does one do to be considered as "driving force" et al?

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#219

Post by never_inline »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #32

Could somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines in this thread? I realize that they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building, and they have some pretty significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself. Some amount of skepticism is warranted, of course, but a lot of these comments read as closer to…

Because connections and social signalling matter more than ideas among the rich of the world. Only some people can get such disproportionate advantages.

Re: Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

#220

Post by never_inline »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #107
pdabbadabba wrote: post #32

Could somebody explain why there is so much negativity towards Thinking Machines in this thread? I realize that they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building, and they have some pretty significant OpenAI talent on board, including Murati herself. Some amount of skepticism is warranted, of course, but a lot of these comments read as closer to…

I think most people aren’t aware that as CTO Murati can take a large chunk of the credit for OpenAI’s success. Her skills were mostly in deft technical management, a skill often under appreciated by nerds. Her success here is going to heavily depend on her ability to attract the right talent.

Please quantity those contributions in "technical management". Otherwise it sounds like a boilerplate excuse non technical people will use.
Post reply on HN