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Nov 18, 2025
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Happy Tuesday! Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab aims to raise up to $5 Billion. Databricks is in talks to raise money at a valuation of more than $130 billion. Jeff Bezos founds a new AI startup with over $6 billion in funding.
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Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence developer co-founded by ex-OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has been in talks with potential investors to raise between $4 billion and $5 billion in the startup’s next round of funding, according to two people who spoke with Murati. That target would at least triple the capital the nine-month-old company has already raised. It’s aiming for a valuation of at least $50 billion, according to a third person. The fundraising target, which hasn’t been reported, is ambitious for a company that’s only recently started to release products. It comes as investors pour money into neolabs, or research-intensive AI startups seeking to exploit new approaches to developing AI models they say major developers like OpenAI and Anthropic may have overlooked. Thinking Machines Lab previously raised $2 billion, most recently at a valuation of $10 billion, from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. It could use the new money to hire AI researchers and pay for the servers to train and run its models. In October, Thinking Machines launched Tinker, an application programming interface that allows developers to finetune, or tweak, open-source models. Murati has told investors that the company aims to produce models customized to a company’s performance indicators or business metrics. It also plans to release a consumer product, such as an AI-powered assistant consumers can speak to. Bloomberg previously reported the valuation target. (Updates funding range.)
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Databricks, a database provider whose tools help customers develop and use AI, is in talks to raise money at a valuation of more than $130 billion, up around 30% from its valuation in a financing round just two months ago, The Information reported late Monday. The company, which has raised more than $15 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners and T. Rowe Price, could use the money to make acquisitions and hire researchers and keep pace with Snowflake, a rival database provider that sports a $86 billion market capitalization. Databricks
hasn’t signed a term sheet with any investment firms.
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has cofounded a new AI startup that he will lead as co-CEO, the New York Times reported Monday. The company, known as Project Prometheus, has more than $6 billion in funding, in part from Bezos, and will be focused on artificial intelligence that can help with engineering, manufacturing and other technical tasks for sectors like aerospace and automobiles. Bezos’s cofounder is former Google executive Vik Bajaj, the report said. At Google, Bajaj worked closely with Sergey Brin on several initiatives, including the Wing drone delivery service and the self-driving car
project that eventually became Waymo. Most recently, Bajaj cofounded Foresite Labs, an incubator for AI and data science startups. Bezos’s work as co-CEO is the first time he has taken on a formal operational role since stepping down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021. Bezos has also spent significant time since leaving Amazon on his space startup Blue Origin, though his title there is “founder.” The project’s funding makes it one of the best-funded early stage AI companies. Project Prometheus has already hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from OpenAI and Meta, and is aiming to work on similar efforts to Periodic Labs, which is developing AI to automate scientific research, the report said.
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Lawrence Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University, said Monday he will step back from all public commitments after the Harvard Crimson disclosed his correspondence with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers is a member of OpenAI’s board of directors and also holds roles at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and Bloomberg News. Summers and Bret Taylor, the chair of the OpenAI board, did not immediately comment on whether Summers would step down from the AI developer’s board. OpenAI didn’t have a comment. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers told The Crimson. Summers joined the OpenAI board in November 2023 after the board, then made of different directors, fired CEO Sam Altman, prompting hundreds of OpenAI employees to threaten to quit. The new board, helmed by Taylor, rehired Altman.
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Online marketplace Faire announced a tender offer Monday to buy employee shares at a price that values the company at $5.2 billion, nearly 60% lower than the company’s last public valuation of $12.6 billion from mid-2022. The shares will be bought by a group of investors, including hedge fund and growth equity investment firm WCM Investment Management, Baillie Gifford and True North Fund. Faire operates an online marketplace where brands and other sellers can list their products for retailers to purchase in bulk to stock in their
stores. It saw a surge of demand during the Covid pandemic as sellers sought out online alternatives to the in-person trade shows where they traditionally make sales. Faire capitalized on that demand with three fundraising rounds in roughly 18 months starting in late 2020, culminating in a $416 million investment in May 2022 from Sequoia Capital. But soon after that, e-commerce growth began to slow, and the company was forced to cut costs and slashed its internal valuation to $5 billion. Faire’s growth has picked back up recently, however. The company said Monday its annualized revenue was more than $500 million and that Faire would facilitate nearly $3 billion in product sales this year. It also announced plans to develop AI tools for sellers and retailers as well as a logistics service that will allow retailers to receive products from different sellers in one shipment. The Information reported Faire’s talks with
potential investors, revenue details and the plans for the logistics service in August.
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