Seed round, valuation $12 billion!
A record-breaking entrepreneurial seed round has emerged in Silicon Valley and even globally.
Former OpenAI CTO Mira's startup, Thinking Machines Lab—just announced its first financing situation:
Successfully raised about $2 billion (approximately 143 billion RMB), and the company's valuation skyrocketed to $12 billion (approximately 861 billion RMB) overnight, becoming one of the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.
Leading the investment is A16z, along with a number of chip manufacturers—among them, NVIDIA under Huang's leadership is the most noteworthy.
It should be noted that Thinking Machines Lab was just officially established this February, and it is still in a state of having zero products...
Yet despite this, it still attracted many investors lining up to invest.
Naturally, the most noteworthy is NVIDIA, as the biggest beneficiary of the AI era; even the largest seed round is just a drizzle in the pool of a $4 trillion market cap.
Moreover, Huang, who is in Beijing, saw his market value increase by nearly $160 billion just last night...
Huang, who is attending the Chain Expo in Beijing, just brought "very, very good news": H20 is resuming supply. There are reports that a large number of Chinese clients, including Tencent and ByteDance, are already lining up to buy cards.
The most expensive seed round company: 0 products valued at $86 billion
Thinking Machines Lab being so highly sought after is both expected and reasonable.
This company was officially established this February, but earlier operations began after the internal conflict at OpenAI and the departure of former CTO Mira Murati.
At that time, the most attention was on Mira's recruitment from OpenAI: two-thirds of the founding team came from OpenAI.
Today's Mark Zuckerberg is truly beyond compare...
A long list of big names includes:
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman
Former OpenAI Vice President of Research (later training) Barret Zoph
Former OpenAI Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew
Former OpenAI Vice President of Research (security) Weng Li (Peking University alumnus)
GPT's first author, "genius boy" Alec Radford
…
The founding vision of Thinking Machines Lab is "dedicated to building a future where everyone can access knowledge and tools, allowing AI to meet their unique needs and goals."
In Mira's own words, summarizing:
The existence of Thinking Machines Lab is to promote collaborative general intelligence to enhance human capabilities.
To be fair, in terms of products, Thinking Machines Lab is still in the stage of making big plans, "We will release our first product in the next few months." But in front of the hottest resource in Silicon Valley—talent, at least the chip manufacturers believe that acting first is the way to go.
(p.s. In the frenzy of spending money to recruit talent, Thinking Machines Lab is also one of the targets.)
Not just NVIDIA, Cisco and AMD are also on the list of investors. This may be related to Thinking Machines Lab's product plans:
An open-source component that will assist researchers and startups in developing custom models.
After this round of financing, Thinking Machines Lab has ramped up recruitment, and the founding big shots are all stepping in to wave flags:
However, with such a high valuation, the real test of technology and product begins.
Compared to other companies, Thinking Machines not only has a gathering of top talents but also has the AI computing power of NVIDIA backing it. Buying cards may be more convenient and prioritized.
Especially given the current restoration of the Chinese market by NVIDIA.
NVIDIA H20 resumes sales in China.
Yes, Huang has been in Beijing these days and personally announced NVIDIA's good news.
Mainly consists of two parts—
Firstly, the U.S. government has approved NVIDIA's H20 export license.
We can start shipping now, so we will begin selling H20 to the Chinese market. I am very excited to be able to ship H20 soon, and I am very happy about this; it is truly very, very good news.
Reports say that Tencent, ByteDance, and others have already applied for procurement.
Secondly, NVIDIA will launch a new graphics card named RTX Pro, "which is the ideal choice for smart factories and logistics digital twin AI."
As soon as the news came out, NVIDIA's stock price soared.
After just breaking the $4 trillion market cap, the good news yesterday caused it to soar by another 4%, adding $160 billion to the market cap overnight, and it is rushing towards $4.2 trillion.
What is even scarier is that this may just be the beginning, as some institutions are still optimistic and looking for more. Investment firm Melius Research has raised NVIDIA's target price from $205 to $235.
Five trillion dollars may also be just around the corner.
Hot, too hot.
One More Thing
However, Huang, who is in Beijing, does not feel hot.
Beijing's high temperature has already exceeded 35°, but Huang still appeared in his familiar leather jacket in various indoor and outdoor settings.
Various interviewers have warmed him up, but Huang's explanation is, 'Because my suit didn't have time to be dry cleaned, I only have one suit, and it’s a bit worn. I hope my leather jacket looks okay.'
In fact, the seemingly laid-back Huang is also a detail fanatic. He even specifically asked someone about the dress code when meeting with relevant Chinese officials, but received family-like care in return—
"Dress comfortably as you like."
Perhaps out of formality, Huang still wore a leather jacket.
Additionally, it is still receiving the highest level of attention. At today's Chain Expo, it was already announced that Huang would give a speech in Chinese at the opening ceremony. This is his first time speaking Chinese in a public setting.
He has repeatedly emphasized that this challenge makes him both nervous and excited, and he is already preparing to practice Mandarin overnight in the hotel.
Huang is indeed not exaggerating.
Although it is well known that Huang is a pride of the Chinese community, he learned Mandarin later during his time at AMD to communicate with his Chinese colleagues.
His mother tongue is Hokkien—
"Fate accounts for 30%, hard work for 70%; those who strive will win."
