Thinking Machines Lab, the AI company founded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, has released Inkling, its first open-weights model. The move marks the startup’s first major public milestone after 18 months of largely behind-the-scenes development.
Inkling is designed as a flexible, customizable alternative to monolithic AI models. Rather than pushing a one-size-fits-all approach, Thinking Machines built Inkling to be fine-tuned by developers and organizations for specific use cases. The model is available under an open license, giving users full access to its weights for modification and deployment.
The release signals Thinking Machines’ bet that the future of AI lies in specialized, adaptable models rather than ever-larger general-purpose systems. This philosophy sets it apart from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have focused increasingly on massive frontier models.
The company raised over $1 billion in its initial funding round and has been building out a substantial research team. Inkling represents the first proof point of the company’s technical approach.
Early benchmarks show Inkling performing competitively with other open models in its class, including on reasoning and coding tasks. The model is available immediately for download and deployment.
