Mira Murati Just Raised $2 Billion—And Changed the Game for Female Founders

In today’s update: a possible EU-Trump trade shift, a big win for the Lionesses, and Mira Murati’s mind-blowing $2 billion seed round—rewriting the rules for women in tech.

– Against all odds.

Earlier this month, Mira Murati’s new company, Thinking Machines Lab, confirmed what the rumor mill had been buzzing about: they’ve raised a staggering $2 billion in seed funding at a $12 billion valuation.

Yes, you read that right. It’s the largest seed round ever in startup and venture capital history. It’s been widely reported—but one crucial angle hasn’t received enough attention: how unlikely this was, and how deeply it matters, especially for women founders.

Murati isn’t just another startup founder. She’s the Albania-born former CTO of OpenAI, a key figure behind the creation of ChatGPT, and someone who helped spark the generative AI movement we’re living in now. When she left OpenAI earlier this year, the industry knew something big was coming—but few expected this.

And while Thinking Machines hasn’t revealed much yet, insiders say Murati is assembling a next-gen AI company that’s aiming to solve some of humanity’s most urgent problems—climate change, diseases, inequality. The vision? To break the AI bubble and bring experts from other fields—science, healthcare, policy—into the fold before it’s too late and AI becomes a runaway train. Her company isn’t just building models; it’s building bridges.

But Murati is also stepping onto a battlefield already crowded with giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—teams that have years of a head start. That’s where the $2 billion comes in: compute, talent, and time are expensive, and she’ll need all three.

Still, the funding itself is historic. Consider this: last year, startups with at least one woman on the founding team raised $38 billion—but those founded solely by women? Just 2.1% of total VC dollars. That’s $3.7 billion across roughly 800 deals. And here’s Murati—raising more than half that, alone, in a single round.

A recent report by Female Founders Fund and Inc. makes the contrast even clearer. Despite receiving far less funding, women-led startups tend to do more with less—bringing in 78 cents of revenue per dollar raised, compared to just 31 cents for their male-led counterparts. They’re not just catching up—they’re outperforming.

So what happens when you do give a woman founder $2 billion? And not just any founder—a generational talent who’s already helped shape the future once?

The investor list reads like a who’s who of tech: Accel, AMD, Cisco, Jane Street, Nvidia, and ServiceNow. Of course, they’re betting on a return. But this story is about more than valuation. It’s about what happens when capital meets purpose—and when a woman finally gets a seat at the biggest table.

Murati’s success is more than a milestone—it’s a signal. To every ambitious woman watching from the sidelines, and every underestimated founder building in the shadows: what once seemed impossible is now very, very real.