It’s hard to believe it’s been over two years since artificial intelligence truly exploded into our everyday conversations, right? Generative AI, in particular, has really taken off, and its impact has certainly made waves on Wall Street. Remember that frenzy that kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022? Investors were so excited that billions of dollars poured into this groundbreaking technology.
To keep tabs on all the excitement, Seeking Alpha has actually started a new AI series! Every weekend, they’ll be diving into trending models and the latest announcements, offering some key insights on how these companies are valued and their performance metrics.
The “OpenAI Mafia” and Their New Ventures
Now, ChatGPT’s launch also gave rise to something pretty interesting: the “OpenAI Mafia.” It’s not a formal group, of course, but it’s a term people are using to describe those influential former OpenAI employees who’ve gone on to start their own AI ventures. It’s kind of like the “PayPal Mafia” from back in the day, where early PayPal folks like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel left to become major players in the tech world.
Today, we’re going to chat about two of the leading startups founded by these OpenAI alumni: Thinking Machines Lab, spearheaded by former CTO and interim CEO Mira Murati, and Anthropic, created by the siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei.
Thinking Machines Lab: Big Bucks, No Products Yet
You might remember Mira Murati from when she was named interim CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI in 2023, during Sam Altman’s brief exit. She surprisingly left OpenAI last September and then launched her own startup, Thinking Machines Lab, just this past February.
Recently, her San Francisco-based company has been in the spotlight after Murati managed to raise a whopping $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in a funding round! This incredible investment was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from big names like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, ServiceNow, and Cisco Systems, among others. It’s truly a massive funding round, especially for a startup that doesn’t even have any revenue or products yet. This just goes to show how eager investors are to back promising new AI labs. Thinking Machines Lab hasn’t really spilled the beans on what they’re building, with Murati only hinting that they’re creating “multimodal AI that works with the ways people naturally interact with the world, including through conversation and sight.”
Interestingly, Thinking Machines Lab hasn’t just attracted researchers and engineers from competitors like Meta AI; they’ve also brought on board Murati’s former OpenAI colleagues like John Schulman, Jonathan Lachman, and Barret Zoph. There were even talks that Meta was looking to acquire the startup to boost its superintelligence efforts, but those discussions didn’t end in a final offer.
Anthropic: A Major Player with Growing Revenue
Similarly, Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon and Google, reached a towering valuation of $61.5 billion in March after completing its latest $3.5 billion funding round. Amazon had previously invested $4 billion into the startup and is reportedly even exploring the possibility of making an additional multi-billion dollar investment.
Founded in 2021, Anthropic has become a major rival to OpenAI and is best known for its Claude family of large language models. This company is really growing, too! They’ve reportedly hit an annualized revenue rate of $4 billion in July, which is already four times higher than what they were bringing in at the beginning of the year.
Anthropic’s Claude models are designed to do similar things to ChatGPT, like responding to prompts with human-like text. These models have become incredibly popular, with major companies like Apple, Zoom, and Amazon integrating them to power their own ecosystems. As of early 2025, Claude AI reportedly had a remarkable 18.9 million monthly active users worldwide.
Of course, these aren’t the only companies involving former OpenAI employees; there are other notable ventures out there like Stem AI, Eureka Labs, Living Carbon, Prosper Robotics, Cresta, and Covariant. It’s clear that the talent from OpenAI is truly shaping the future of AI in exciting ways!