Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has released Inkling — an open-weights AI model that anyone can access. The release marks the company’s first major product since its founding and signals a push toward more accessible AI development tools.
Inkling is designed as an open model that developers can download, fine-tune and deploy without restrictive licensing. The move positions Thinking Machines alongside other open-weight initiatives like Meta’s Llama and Mistral’s open models, while differentiating from OpenAI’s proprietary approach.
A bet on open AI
The release comes as the AI industry debates the merits of open versus closed models. Murati’s decision to release Inkling with open weights suggests a strategic bet that developers will gravitate toward customizable, transparent alternatives to black-box API-based models.
Thinking Machines has been building its team and infrastructure since Murati departed OpenAI in late 2024. The company has positioned itself around making frontier AI capabilities more accessible to developers and enterprises. Inkling’s release gives the market its first real look at what Thinking Machines can deliver, and early benchmarks suggest the model is competitive with other open-weight alternatives in its class.
