Australian founder and VC Paul Bassat’s Square Peg Capital is backing Murati’s record-breaking AI startup that aims to ‘advance collaborative general intelligence.’
It is the biggest seed raise on record according to CB Insights, and reportedly values the AI company founded by former OpenAI heavyweight Murati at AUD$18.5 billion.
Thinking Machines Lab closed an AUD$3.1 billion seed round over the last month, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Square Peg, the Australian VC behind unicorns Canva, Airwallex, Zeller, and Rokt, confirmed it participated in the seed round and says it is thrilled to back Murati and the Thinking Machines team.
“We’re building multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world – through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate,” Murati stated on X this week.
The first product from Thinking Machines Lab will be available within the next few months, Murati says. The company’s ‘best science’ that will help the research community ‘better understand frontier AI systems,’ will be available soon.
“Thinking Machines Lab exists to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence,” Murati stated this week.
In February, Murati revealed that Thinking Machine Labs would be a public benefit corporation committed to ‘building accessible and broadly capable artificial intelligence systems.’
The Australian connection
Helping to shape the future is a value shared by Melburnian Bassat. He founded VC firm Square Peg in 2012 with a mission to support the next generation of founders seeking to build global businesses. The company’s tagline states that ‘square pegs might not fit in round holes. But they do fit with us.’
Bassat spoke about the massive opportunity in AI at the Morgan Stanley conference in Sydney last year, specifically mentioning the fast traction of OpenAI, where Murati was CTO from 2018 to 2024.
“OpenAI is reputed to have a couple billion dollars in annualised revenue, it has grown incredibly fast,” Bassat told Bloomberg. “No question, valuations in AI are more elevated than they are in the rest of the market.”
In addition to its investment in Thinking Machines Lab, Square Peg holds positions in numerous other AI startups, including Constantinople (Sydney), Exodigo (Israel), Cuttable (Melbourne), and Supabase (San Francisco).
“We have been investing in AI businesses for 4 or 5 years,” Bassat told Bloomberg. “We’re in a new era of computing which is always incredibly fun and as an investor its both the most exciting time and the hardest time. We’re going to see an exciting new generation of businesses emerge.”
Bassat’s 28-year journey in tech
Today, Square Peg has five funds spread across VC and public equities and $5 billion in assets. Late last year the VC announced it is raising two further funds.
Many of its investments are in Australia, New Zealand, and Israel, though Square Peg’s global tech fund also holds positions in US tech firms monday.com, duolingo and Cloudflare.
Bassat is no stranger to advanced tech systems. He co-founded online employment platform SEEK in 1997, one of Australia’s earliest global innovation success stories. The company went public on ASX in 2005. Bassat served as Co-CEO until 2011 and founded Square Peg with Tony Holt the year after.
In August last year, Bassat launched Amplify, an non-partisan organisation committed to helping Australia become ‘a more prosperous, fairer, more cohesive and happier country.’
AMPLIFY is a community where Australians get to have their say and make a difference on the most important issues that we face as a country. We are non-partisan and completely independent of any political party. Anyone can become a member of AMPLIFY at no charge.
“The way in which we will make an impact is by taking our ideas to politicians and Amplifying the voice of our community to spark change,” Bassat wrote on X.
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