A new “unicorn at birth” has entered the AI race. Unconventional AI, a two-month-old startup founded by former Databricks AI chief Naveen Rao, has raised $475M at a $4.5B valuation in a seed round. Backed by a16z, Lightspeed, Lux, DCVC, and Jeff Bezos, the company is targeting one of AI’s hardest problems: building a more energy-efficient computer for next-generation AI workloads as power and compute constraints intensify.

Thinking Machines Labs is reportedly seeking a $50B valuation, just months after raising at a $12B mark. But with co-founder departures and a first product—Tinker—that feels incremental rather than transformative, the jump raises questions. As we’ve covered before, the company still looks more like a research lab than a revenue engine. The widening gap between ambition and output makes this valuation hard to justify.

The AI sector has entered an era of unprecedented valuations — with Thinking Machines raising the largest seed round in history and nearly half of all venture capital now flowing into AI. As M.G. Siegler noted on spyglass, OpenAI leads with a $500B secondary valuation, while Anthropic, xAI, and others are pushing past the $100B mark. But as the race tilts from technology to market share and data access, smaller players remain crucial, driving innovation and attracting the att

Thinking Machines Labs just revealed they’re building a “multimodal AI” system designed to work with language, visuals, and sound — aiming for what they call “collaborative general intelligence.” Backed by a staggering $2 billion seed round led by a16z and filled with ex-OpenAI talent, the young startup is quickly becoming one of the most closely watched players in the next wave of frontier AI.

Global VC funding hit $91 billion in Q2, with nearly half flowing into AI—a clear sign that the AI boom is driving unprecedented investment momentum - based on Fortune and Crunchbase

Thinking Machines is likely building it's own ChatGPT style model given the background of most of its team (shown here). That could position them as an attractive acquisition target from the mega tech corps who are struggling to keep up with Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.