Thinking Machines Lab
Mira Murati's frontier AI lab, whose first product Tinker is an API for fine-tuning open-weight language models.
Overview
Thinking Machines Lab is a frontier AI research company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. In July 2025 it raised a record $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation. Its first product, Tinker (launched October 2025), is an API that gives researchers low-level control over fine-tuning open-weight models. Reported talks to raise at a ~$50 billion valuation collapsed in early 2026, leaving the lab at its original $12 billion mark.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 24 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
ASEAN Perspective
Thinking Machines Lab in Southeast Asia
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What this is for: A frontier research lab whose first shipped product, Tinker, is an API for fine-tuning open-weight language models with fine-grained control over data and algorithms.
Who this is for: ML engineers and researchers who want programmatic control over model fine-tuning rather than a black-box endpoint.
Availability: Paid, usage-based API access; onboarding is gated behind a waitlist. Founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.
What people say
Thinking Machines Lab drew unusual attention for a pre-product company on the strength of Mira Murati's name and a record $2 billion seed. When Tinker finally shipped in October 2025, the loudest praise came from Andrej Karpathy, who framed its design as retaining roughly 90% of algorithmic control while removing about 90% of infrastructure pain; early adopters at Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford, and Redwood Research reported strong results, with Princeton's Goedel team matching full fine-tuning using a fraction of the data. VentureBeat and others noted that Tinker is a sophisticated tool for ML researchers, not a consumer breakthrough, and it landed with less awe than the funding headlines suggested. It is also LoRA-focused and gated behind a waitlist, so hands-on community sentiment is still thin.
The harder skepticism is about the company, not the product. Reported talks to raise at roughly $50 billion collapsed in early 2026 because backers were unwilling to pay that price against a single shipped product, leaving the lab back at its $12 billion mark. That timing coincided with turmoil inside the company, including senior departures, the reported firing of co-founder and CTO Barret Zoph, and Meta poaching several founding members. The result is a well-regarded first product wrapped in an open question about whether the valuation and the team can hold.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Thinking Machines Lab's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Thinking Machines Lab unless explicitly stated.
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