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

reuters.com

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

#191

Post by rockwotj »

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…

Investors are investing just as much in the person/team as what they are building. What they build will change, but having a good team is all the difference.

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

#192

Post by arthurcolle »

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?

It's a false signal

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

#193

Post by Yajirobe »

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 looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble…

People have been saying this for the better part of 10 years

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

#194

Post by [deleted] »

emsign wrote: post #88
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…

> they haven't publicly announced a product yet but presumably the VCs have some idea of what Thinking Machines is building "Presumably" they have "some" idea. Oh really? Are you "sure" about that? Is that a $12B type confidence?

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by leesec »

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…

chatgpt and claude are two of the fastest revenue growing products of all time

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

#196

Post by strken »

miohtama wrote: post #120
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…

This place used to be a place for hackers and founders. Now it is mostly a place for middle aged software engineers who hate someone else to success, change and hope for the future of Linux desktop. Thinking Machines presents both change and success .

From 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

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

#197

Post by Havoc »

novaRom wrote: post #159
Havoc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, though realistically they’d be buying the GPUs regardless of who the investors and this sort of vertical integration isn’t directly illegal

Yes, except they are monopolist, right? It's basically not optional choice.

Technically dominating a market by virtue of best product (or only available) is legal too.

If you can achieve that without anti competitive behaviour then being a monopolist is fine. Legally anyway

Whether this circular thing counts as such behaviour - don’t know but doubt it

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

#198

Post by rchaud »

Yajirobe wrote: post #193
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 looks like a bubble and smells like a bubble… People have been saying this for the better part of 10 years

Zero interest rate policy (2008-2022) probably had a hand in that.

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

#199

Post by rchaud »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #128
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…

Theranos famously didn't manage to raise VC money, the funding all came from people like Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family.

That makes a lot of sense. VCs only make money when companies go public, so a medical device that requires years of regulatory compliance legwork to even be allowed into a lab or pharmacy is an immediate no-go.

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

#200

Post by yunwal »

dan-robertson wrote: post #156
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.

I suppose one should expect ‘time to agi’ to be a function of: 1. Researchers 2. Productivity-enhancing things in the org (either technical stuff like frameworks/optimisations or nebulous social things like better collaboration) 3. Amount of available compute. 4. Luck And then the past experience with openAI should help a lot with doing a good job of #1 and #2 even if it is just being a competent executive.

Surely availability of data is here as well?
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