Nvidia to invest in Thinking Machines Lab and supply AI chips

• Nvidia invests in Thinking Machines Lab, founded by Mira Murati
• Thinking Machines to use Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI chips next year
• Deal to enhance AI model training for the startup

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Nvidia Corp. is making a new investment in Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence company founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, and will supply chips to help train and run the startup’s AI models.

Thinking Machines will use Nvidia’s forthcoming Vera Rubin AI accelerators as part of a multiyear agreement, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. The chips, which will be deployed by Thinking Machines early next year, will provide computing power amounting to at least 1 gigawatt — roughly the amount of energy needed to power 750,000 homes.

Nvidia, which previously invested in Thinking Machines last year, didn’t provide terms of the current deal or discuss whether it will be an infusion of cash, chips or some combination of the two. The companies described the investment as “significant.” A Thinking Machines spokesperson declined to elaborate, while a representative for Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement is part of a flurry of investment deals for Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. The chipmaker is using its resources to promote the use of artificial intelligence in a range of industries, helping jump-start what it calls a new industrial revolution. But the deals have drawn scrutiny for their circular nature, with Nvidia taking stakes in its own customers.

Thinking Machines, meanwhile, held talks last year to raise a new round of funds at a $50 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported in November. That would quadruple the startup’s valuation from July, when it raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation.

“This partnership accelerates our capacity to build AI that people can shape and make their own, as it shapes human potential in turn,” Murati said in the statement.

Under Murati, a tech executive who previously served as chief technology officer at OpenAI, Thinking Machines hired dozens of employees from the ChatGPT maker and rolled out its first product, Tinker, in October. That service helps users fine-tune large language models, the technology that powers chatbots such as ChatGPT.

In more recent months, Thinking Machines has lost some employees to OpenAI, including its chief technology officer.