{"id":236012,"date":"2026-04-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/exclusive-google-deepens-thinking-machines-lab-ties-with-new-multi-billion-dollar-deal-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:00:00","slug":"exclusive-google-deepens-thinking-machines-lab-ties-with-new-multi-billion-dollar-deal-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/exclusive-google-deepens-thinking-machines-lab-ties-with-new-multi-billion-dollar-deal-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Google deepens Thinking Machines Lab ties with new multi-billion-dollar deal | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati\u2019s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has signed a new multi-billion-dollar agreement to expand its use of Google Cloud\u2019s AI infrastructure, including systems powered by Nvidia\u2019s latest GPUs, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The deal is valued in the single-digit billions, according to a source familiar with the matter, and includes access to Google\u2019s latest AI systems built atop Nvidia\u2019s new GB300 chips, alongside infrastructure services to support model training and deployment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google has been actively striking a number of cloud deals with AI developers as it aims to wrap together its cloud offerings with other services like storage, a Kubernetes engine, and Spanner, its database product. Earlier this month, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/google-broadcom-partnership-compute\" target=\"_blank\">Anthropic signed an agreement<\/a> with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of tensor processing unit (TPUs) capacity (these are Google\u2019s custom-designed AI chips for machine learning workloads).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the competition is fierce. Just this week, Anthropic also signed a new agreement with Amazon to secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training and deploying Claude.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Earlier this year, Thinking Machines partnered with Nvidia in a deal that included an investment from the chipmaker. But this is the first time the lab has struck a deal with a cloud services provider. The deal is not exclusive, so Thinking Machines may use multiple cloud providers over time, but it\u2019s still a sign that Google is looking to lock in fast-growing frontier labs early.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Murati left her job as OpenAI\u2019s chief technologist and founded Thinking Machines in February 2025. The company, which soon afterwards raised a $2 billion seed round at a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/07\/15\/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-is-worth-12b-in-seed-round\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$12 billion valuation<\/a>, has remained highly secretive, but launched its first product in October. Dubbed <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/thinking-machines-lab-first-product-fine-tune\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tinker<\/a>, it\u2019s a tool that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wednesday\u2019s deal provided some insight into what Thinking Machines is developing. In a press release, Google noted that it can support the startup\u2019s reinforcement learning workloads, which Tinker\u2019s architecture relies on. Reinforcement learning is a training approach that has underpinned recent breakthroughs at labs, including DeepMind and OpenAI, and the scale of the Google Cloud deal reflects how computationally expensive that work can get.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco, CA<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thinking Machines is among the first Google Cloud customers to access its GB300-powered systems, which offer a 2X improvement in training and serving speed compared to prior-generation GPUs, per Google.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGoogle Cloud got us running at record speed with the reliability we demand,\u201d Myle Ott, a founding researcher at Thinking Machines, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>When you purchase through links in our articles, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/04\/22\/exclusive-google-deepens-thinking-machines-lab-ties-with-new-multi-billion-dollar-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati\u2019s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has signed a new multi-billion-dollar agreement to expand its use of Google Cloud\u2019s AI infrastructure, including systems powered by Nvidia\u2019s latest GPUs, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The deal is valued in the single-digit billions, according to a source familiar with the matter, and includes access to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-236012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}