Mira Murati left OpenAI to build her own lab, Thinking Machines, and it's now negotiating a round that would value it at roughly four times what it was worth a year ago. Existing backer Accel is discussing leading the deal, with Nvidia weighing a return as an investor, at a pre-money valuation of at least $40 billion. That's a real number for a company generating just over $100 million in annualized revenue, a multiple around 400 times.

Meanwhile, the company she left made its own splash yesterday. OpenAI released Astra, and president Greg Brockman closed the press call with four words that immediately went everywhere: "Welcome to the AGI era."

• OpenAI Declares the AGI Era: Astra just launched, and its own president says the label finally fits.

• A Bitcoin Miner Turned $30 Billion AI Giant: Crusoe tripled its valuation in ten months, chasing an IPO.

• Mira Murati's Lab Wants $40 Billion: Thinking Machines is in talks for a round that would 4x its price from last summer.

• The $100 Guardrail Removal Business: A startup is charging money to strip safety filters off AI models.

…and a whole lot more that you can read about below.

Thinking Machines, the AI lab Mira Murati founded after leaving OpenAI, is negotiating at least $1 billion at a pre-money valuation of at least $40 billion, with existing backer Accel discussing the lead and Nvidia weighing a return. That's roughly four times its $10 billion valuation from July 2025's record $2 billion seed round, though still below the $50 billion it sought and failed to secure late last year. Annualized revenue now tops $100 million, mostly from Tinker, its usage-based platform for customizing the open-weight Inkling model, putting the proposed valuation at roughly 400 times revenue. Co-founders Lilian Weng and Luke Metz recently left to return to OpenAI.

OpenAI hired Dali Rajic as its new Chief Revenue Officer, days after longtime COO Brad Lightcap announced he's leaving to "start something new." The moves add to a stretch of senior departures and hires across the company as it scales its enterprise business. Separately, OpenAI also launched "Ultrafast," a new mode that runs GPT-5.6 Sol at 14 times normal speed, and announced a partnership with IBM to push AI deeper into enterprise workflows.

OpenAI released Astra, branded GPT-6 Astra, on Thursday, calling it its most intelligent and most aligned model yet, trained on more than 100,000 GPUs. It outscored every frontier rival, including its own GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic's Fable, on computer use, browser use, and cybersecurity benchmarks, completing desktop tasks in roughly half the time of its predecessor. Access rolls out first to OpenAI's Daybreak cybersecurity partners, then to Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business users, off by default for enterprise admins. The controversy: Astra uses "opaque recurrence" to reason internally without the legible trace older models show, and chief scientist Jakub Pachocki admitted "monitorability is getting more challenging." The launch lands weeks after OpenAI's own agents broke out of a sealed test and hacked into Hugging Face's systems.

Crusoe, which started in 2018 burning flared natural gas to power crypto mining, raised over $3 billion at a roughly $30 billion valuation, tripling its worth in ten months. Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners co-led, with Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Capital joining. The raise follows a $13 billion, five-year cloud contract with Jane Street, and Crusoe has reportedly already met with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America about a near-term IPO. It now competes directly with CoreWeave, Nebius, and Lambda in a neocloud market projected to hit $400 billion by 2031.

Founding Product Engineer, Full Stack | b12 Labs
San Francisco Bay Area, California (Full-time)
Help make hard molecules for pharma and biotech at an early-stage startup.

Staff Platform Engineer | Postscript
Remote (Full-time)
Build platform infrastructure for the SMS revenue platform used by e-commerce merchants.

Backend Engineer | GoGoGrandparent
Remote (Full-time)
Build backend systems for the AI-assisted concierge service that helps seniors with rides, meals, and meds.

Product Engineer, AI / Full-Stack | Great Question
Remote (Full-time)
Build the platform that puts user research on autopilot.

Senior Backend & Infrastructure Engineer | Scispot
Remote (Full-time)
Build the data infrastructure platform used by biotech companies.

Lead/Group Product Manager | Noora Health
San Francisco, California (Full-time)
Shape product for a platform training patients and families with practical health skills.

ML Engineer: Speech & LLMs | Knowtex
United States (Full-time)
Help make doctors 2x more efficient with AI note-taking and charge capture.

Research Engineer, Human Biomechanics | Relari
United States (Full-time)
Build dexterous robots that learn from human biomechanics.

Full-Stack Software Engineer | Agave
United States (Full-time)
Build AI financial operations tools for the construction industry.

A PM can summarize research, draft a PRD, and mock up a prototype before lunch. The hard part starts when the team has to decide what actually gets built.

Jira Product Discovery gives product teams one place to capture insights, prioritize ideas with consistent frameworks, and build living roadmaps stakeholders can rally around.

And because it’s connected to Jira, the context behind every decision stays with the work—so developers and their agents know not just what to build, but why.

AI helps PMs move faster. Jira Product Discovery helps the whole team build with confidence.

Get Started for Free

Crusoe Triples Its Valuation to $30 Billion in Ten Months

Crusoe raised over $3 billion co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners, with Mubadala Capital joining, tripling its worth from a $10 billion valuation just ten months ago, as the company reportedly explores a near-term IPO.

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Eyes a $40 Billion Valuation

Thinking Machines is negotiating at least $1 billion in new funding at a pre-money valuation of at least $40 billion, with Accel discussing the lead and Nvidia weighing a return as an investor, four times its valuation from last summer.

Today's Growth Recommendation

Stop writing RFPs. Tell Vendry your budget and needs, and their experts send back 3-4 vetted agencies worth pitching, free.

Get Matched Free Below ↓

Stop writing RFPs. Tell us your budget and needs, and our experts send back 3 or 4 agencies worth pitching. The no cost way to source the best agency, without lifting a fingers

Get Matched Free

Separate the Demo From the Default

Astra launch is a good example of a habit worth building whenever a company shows off a headline-grabbing capability. OpenAI's own demo cut a job search from 5 hours to under 3 minutes, a genuinely striking number. But Astra's most advanced features ship off by default for enterprise customers, and its cybersecurity capabilities are limited to vetted partners first. The demo shows what's possible. The default setting shows what most people will actually get on day one. Both numbers matter, and they're rarely the same number.

The Demo vs. Default Prompt

Use this any time a company unveils an impressive capability, before assuming that's what you'll actually experience using the product.

Invite friends & get instant rewards

If you enjoy The Incredible Edge, share it to unlock free resources when they subscribe.