Mira Murati, the former Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI—a name that’s practically synonymous with the AI revolution—is cooking up something new. And the folks at Sequoia Capital, one of the Valley’s most storied venture firms, are already circling, ready to place their bets.

“We’re talking to her,” Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia, said casually during a Tuesday chat with Bloomberg Television. It’s the kind of offhand remark that might slip by unnoticed if it weren’t loaded with so much subtext. Murati, who stepped away from OpenAI in September 2024 after helping steer the ship through its ChatGPT glory days, isn’t just twiddling her thumbs. She’s launched Thinking Machines Lab, a startup that’s got the tech world whispering and speculating. And Sequoia—known for backing winners like Apple, Google, and Airbnb in their early days—wants in.

So, what’s the fuss about? Murati’s new gig isn’t just another AI play. She’s pulling together a dream team, including other OpenAI alumni, to build something ambitious: AI models and products designed to foster “human-AI collaboration.” It’s a phrase that sounds buzzword-y until you realize this is the woman who helped turn OpenAI into a household name. If anyone can make it more than jargon, it’s her.

The details of Thinking Machines Lab are still under wraps—classic startup secrecy—but the buzz is palpable. Murati’s track record speaks for itself. At OpenAI, she was a key figure in developing the tech that powers ChatGPT, the chatbot that went from a cool demo to a cultural phenomenon in what felt like overnight. She’s not just a technologist; she’s a visionary who’s proven she can take big ideas and make them real. Now, she’s betting on herself, and Sequoia seems ready to bet on her too.

Murati isn’t the first OpenAI star to strike out on her own, and Sequoia isn’t new to this game either. Just last year, the firm threw its weight behind Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI co-founder, who raised a cool $1 billion for his startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI). That was a hefty chunk of change for a company that, at the time, was more concept than product. Fast forward to February 2025, and Bloomberg reports suggest Sutskever’s back in the fundraising game, this time eyeing a valuation north of $30 billion. That’s unicorn territory—and then some.

What’s wild is that neither SSI nor Thinking Machines Lab has a blockbuster product on the market yet. No revenue streams, no shiny apps in the App Store. And still, the money’s flowing. It’s a testament to the gravitational pull these OpenAI vets carry. Investors aren’t just buying into tech; they’re buying into people—people who’ve already changed the game once and might just do it again.

Sequoia’s Alfred Lin gets it. He’s not sweating the lack of a balance sheet today. “The entry price today is important but not as relevant when you think of the order of magnitude in the future,” he told Bloomberg. Translation: he’s playing the long game. A million bucks—or even a billion—might look like pocket change if these startups hit the jackpot. “The order of magnitude we think about today will surprise us in the long run,” he added, hinting at the kind of exponential growth that keeps venture capitalists up at night dreaming.

Why Murati matters

To understand why Murati’s got Silicon Valley on edge, you’ve got to rewind a bit. Before she left OpenAI, she was the brains behind some of its biggest leaps. She joined the company in 2018, back when it was still a scrappy research outfit co-founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others. By the time she became CTO, OpenAI had morphed into an AI powerhouse, thanks in no small part to her work on scaling its tech. ChatGPT, which launched in late 2022, wasn’t just a hit—it was a cultural reset, showing the world what AI could do in plain English (or Spanish, or Mandarin, you name it).

But Murati’s departure last fall raised eyebrows. OpenAI was riding high, yet she walked away, along with a handful of other key players. Was it burnout? Creative differences? Or just the itch to build something from scratch? She’s been tight-lipped, but Thinking Machines Lab is starting to paint a picture. The name alone—a nod to Alan Turing’s pioneering ideas about intelligent machines—suggests she’s not here to mess around. This isn’t about chatbots that crack jokes; it’s about AI that works with us, not just for us.

The bigger picture

Zoom out, and this is more than a Mira Murati story. It’s a snapshot of where AI—and Silicon Valley—is headed. The past few years have been an AI arms race, with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic (another OpenAI spinoff) duking it out for supremacy. Now, the next wave is emerging: founders taking their know-how and spinning it into new ventures. It’s a gold rush, and the picks and shovels are algorithms and GPUs.

Sequoia’s move to court Murati fits the pattern. The firm has a knack for spotting talent early—think Steve Jobs at Apple or Larry Page at Google—and they’re not shy about writing big checks. Backing Sutskever was a flex; doubling down on Murati could be a masterstroke. But it’s not without risk. AI is a crowded field, and for every OpenAI, there’s a graveyard of startups that flamed out. Thinking Machines Lab will need to deliver something groundbreaking to justify the hype.

For now, though, the Valley’s holding its breath. Murati’s still in stealth mode, and Lin’s playing coy. “We’re talking to her” isn’t a commitment—it’s a teaser. But in a world where AI is rewriting the rules of everything from healthcare to Hollywood, those talks could be the start of something massive. Or, as Lin might put it, something that surprises us in the long run.