Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Launches Inkling Model, Underperforms Chinese Rivals

Key Takeaways

Murati's AI Startup Takes On China's Open Models

Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, has launched her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab. Their new model, Inkling, underperforms compared to leading Chinese open models. Inkling has 975 billion parameters and supports a 1 million token context window. The model was pretrained on 45 trillion tokens spanning text, images, audio, and video. Despite its impressive specs, Inkling trails behind Chinese models like Zhipu's GLM 5.2 and Moonshot's Kimi K2.6 in benchmarks.

Thinking Machines Bets on Open Model Inkling

Thinking Machines Lab released its first open model, Inkling, which has 975 billion parameters and 41 billion active parameters. Inkling supports a 1 million token context window and was pretrained on 45 trillion tokens of text, images, audio, and video. The model is designed for customization and is available on Thinking Machines' Tinker platform. Inkling's performance is not the strongest among open models but aims for well-rounded performance.

Inkling: A 975B-Parameter Open-Weights Multimodal Model

Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling, a mixture-of-experts transformer with 975B total parameters and 41B active parameters. Inkling supports a context window of up to 1M tokens and was pretrained on 45 trillion tokens of text, images, audio, and video. The model is fine-tunable on Tinker and has open weights.

Inkling Tops US Open Models on Intelligence Index

Thinking Machines' Inkling model has become the top US open model on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Inkling has 975 billion total parameters and 41 billion active parameters. The model is efficient and performs well on various benchmarks, including GDPval-AA v2 and τ3-Banking.

Thinking Machines Releases Open-Weights Model Inkling

Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling, a general-purpose open-source model with 975 billion parameters. Inkling has a controllable effort setting, allowing developers to dial reasoning up or down. The model is available on Thinking Machines' Tinker platform and has open weights on Hugging Face.

Publishers Sue Google Over AI Copyright Infringement

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Google Sued Over Copyrighted Books Used for AI Training

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Small Businesses Can Grow With AI

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EU Forces Google to Share Search Data and AI Tech

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Databricks Scales AI Support for Higher Education

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Taiwan Listed Firms Report Strong Sales Growth

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Trader Claude's Portfolio Recovers

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Prediction Market Arbitrage Opportunities

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Senator Josh Becker Hosts Virtual Town Hall on AI

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Sources

• Murati Knows OpenAI’s Secrets. Her New AI Signals She Prefers China’s.
• Thinking Machines amps up its bet against one-size-fits-all AI with its first open model, Inkling
• Thinking Machines Lab Releases Inkling: A 975B-Parameter Open-Weights Multimodal MoE With 41B Active Parameters And Controllable Thinking Effort
• Thinking Machines’ Inkling Becomes Top US Open Model On Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
• Thinking Machines Releases Open-Weights Model Named Inkling, Shows Strong Benchmark Results Among Open Models
• Authors, publishers sue Google over alleged AI copyright infringement
• Publishers sue Google over use of copyrighted books for AI training
• 10 Ways Small Businesses Can Use AI To Grow–And Even Hire More Workers
• 10 Ways Small Businesses Can Use AI To Grow–And Even Hire More Workers
• Enterprise agents drive AI growth in AWS Marketplace
• It's official: EU will force Google to share search data and open up AI on Android
• Databricks Scales Higher Ed Support with AI
• Listed firms report sales growth in June during AI boom
• Trader Claude's: July 16, 2026, Argentina +143.8pct Exit & NVDA Reload
• Prediction Market Arbitrage: Four Opportunities Live on July 16, 2026 (July 16, 2026)
• Senator Josh Becker to host virtual town hall on artificial intelligence and the future of work on July 16