Kleiner Perkins is in talks to lead the round, which could bring in up to $1 billion in new capital, Bloomberg said. Andreessen Horowitz is also in discussions to invest. The talks come three months after Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz led a $200 million seed round for Mirendil at a $1 billion valuation, marking a fivefold jump in value in a single quarter.
Mirendil was started this year by former Anthropic staffers with the goal of building models capable of improving themselves with little human input, a technique known as recursive self-improvement. The company now has more than 20 staffers.
The new capital would fund Mirendil’s own model and future training runs. The startup plans to launch a frontier model to support engineering and research work by early next year, Bloomberg’s sources said.
“Today, any lab trying to use AI in drug discovery, chemistry, biology, or robotics must also become a frontier AI lab,” Mirendil said on its website, adding that its goal is to make that capability widely accessible.
Anthropic has said its Claude chatbot now drives more than a quarter of the company’s own AI research and development work. OpenAI similarly uses its Codex coding tool to automate parts of its own model development, underscoring why investors are betting on startups built around the same premise.
Mirendil’s talks add to a wave of financing for so-called neo-labs, startups pursuing ambitious research over near-term revenue. Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, is in talks to raise at least $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion, PYMNTS reported, citing The Information. Periodic Labs, a scientific discovery startup founded by former OpenAI researcher Liam Fedus, has been valued at roughly $1.3 billion.
The financing talks would value Mirendil at 25 times its funding raised to date, a multiple that puts it in range with Thinking Machines Lab’s own valuation math as investors continue pricing unproven AI labs on research ambition rather than revenue.
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