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

221–230 of 260 posts

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

#221

Post by never_inline »

torginus wrote: post #133
tsimionescu wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos was worth $9B in 2013 money, and it latet turned out that they had literally nothing but hype. Enron was posting $100B revenue the year before it went bankrupt. Bernie Madoff's fund had huge banks as institutional investors. Magic Leap was valued at $4.6B and had some purportedly amazing demos behind closed doors that anyone who witnessed them thought would revolutionize entertainment. While these are not ne…

The weird thing about Theranos is that every single expert who knew about the technical details of blood testing basically called out the BS from the get go. Blood testing for a single condition can involve blood separation via centrifuges, application of various chemical solutions, a multi-step process using varios test strips (each with different specificities/sensitivities). Not to mention some of the offending ma…

Well, in this case, no one knows the technical details.

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

#222

Post by bko »

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.

Nothing gets people to care so much about VC losses as does a 10 figure check!

Seriously, this stuff is great. A lot of people are getting rich, and I'm sure some value will be created out of it. LPs will be the ones holding the bag but thankfully we don't have a tradition of bailing them out like banks, so what do I care? In the meantime I benefit from VC subsidized coding assistants.

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

#223

Post by yread »

geodel wrote: post #84
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…

True. People here can be like this. I have not forgotten even the greatest juice maker of all times, Juicero was similarly disparaged with all this negativity.

Or Color

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

#224

Post by geodel »

muskmusk wrote: post #129
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My negativity for Thinking Machines is precisely because others (such as yourself) already consider it a success.

I don't think anyone can consider it a success just yet. But someone just injected 2 billion dollars into the enterprise. They are probably given a lot more information than you and I are. Maybe those people are dead wrong and they lose all their money, but maybe not. With the public information there is neither a point in positivity not negativity. It would be speculation either way. A question that could be worth p…

The answer was right in Mira's resignation from OpenAI [1]

“I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration.”

To create time and space and even able to explore it is far beyond cutting edge physics of today. If she is able to do it in just few billion dollars it is investment worth making.

1. https://www.wired.com/story/mira-murati-thinking-machines-la...

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

#225

Post by Melatonic »

lenerdenator wrote: post #31

> "We're excited that in the next couple months we will be able to share our first product, which will include a significant open source component and be useful for researchers and startups developing custom model," CEO Murati said in a post, opens new tab on the X social media platform. We need to jack up interest rates again.

This actually sounds like they might be making something that is generally useful to other companies training foundational models. What that is - I have no idea. But they may be onto something here.

Sort of like the old adage about the Goldrush - why pan for gold when you can just sell tons of shovels to all the others rushing to get rich?

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

#226

Post by bitwize »

TrackerFF wrote: post #163
bitwize wrote: post #155

Who is this person and why is she attempting to skinwalk the name of a really cool computer company (creators of the Connection Machine)?

Ex-CTO of OpenAI

I guess we know the answer to the second question, in the words of Reggie Watts: "for no apparent reason, other than to create a false sense of importance, of which I couldn't retain on my own."

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

#227

Post by computerthings »

mv4 wrote: post #213
belter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

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

#228

Post by BobbyTables2 »

awongh wrote: post #189
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic it almost sounds as if Meg Whitman was highly qualified to run HP…

She was qualified. Are you saying that her previous experience shouldn't have counted as a positive attribute for being hired?

The Sun rose consistently during her tenure at eBay but we certainly don’t give credit for that.

eBay would have succeeded even if a Labrador retriever was CEO - due to everyone else’s efforts.

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

#229

Post by slj »

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…

Oh that’s because the good people of HN have decreed a butlerian jihad

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

#230

Post by awongh »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #228
awongh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was qualified. Are you saying that her previous experience shouldn't have counted as a positive attribute for being hired?

The Sun rose consistently during her tenure at eBay but we certainly don’t give credit for that. eBay would have succeeded even if a Labrador retriever was CEO - due to everyone else’s efforts.

Were so many people saying that when Meg Whitman left eBay? Are people saying that about Mira Murati? -I haven't heard anything to suggest she gets no credit for ChatGPT (the product/technical execution, not the model)
Post reply on HN