Thinking Machines Lab secures Nvidia partnership and investment

Thinking Machines Lab announced on Tuesday that it has entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with Nvidia. The agreement includes a strategic investment from Nvidia into the artificial-intelligence research lab, alongside plans for Thinking Machines Lab to deploy at least one gigawatt of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin systems starting in 2027. The Vera Rubin systems represent Nvidia’s latest AI hardware architecture. The exact financial terms of the partnership and the investment were not disclosed by either company.

The scale of the agreement highlights the intense demand for compute infrastructure—agreements designed to secure the massive processing power required for training and serving AI models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has predicted that companies could spend $3 trillion to $4 trillion on AI infrastructure by the end of the decade. The massive scale of these infrastructure commitments is reflected across the industry; for comparison, rival AI developer OpenAI allegedly inked a $300 billion compute deal with Oracle in 2025.

The partnership comes as Thinking Machines Lab continues to build its financial runway and product ecosystem, despite experiencing notable executive turnover in its short history. Founded in February 2025, the company released its first product, an API called Tinker, in October of that year.

The startup’s financial and backing details include:

• Total funding raised: More than $2 billion since its founding in February 2025.
• Company valuation: Valued at more than $12 billion.
• Key investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and the venture arm of rival chipmaker AMD, alongside Nvidia.

While securing capital, the startup has faced significant personnel changes. Co-founder Andrew Tulloch departed the company in October to join Meta. More recently, three other co-founders—Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz—left the startup to return to OpenAI, which is also the former employer of co-founder Mira Murati.

Despite the departures, co-founder Mira Murati noted that Nvidia’s technology serves as the foundation for the field, stating that “Nvidia’s technology is the foundation on which the entire field is built.” She explained that the partnership will accelerate the lab’s capacity to build customizable AI that people can shape and make their own.

Why it matters

This deal underscores the relentless demand for compute infrastructure among AI labs, with major hardware providers like Nvidia betting heavily on the next generation of model builders to secure their ecosystem.