Artificial intelligence startup Thinking Machines has launched Inkling, a new open-weight artificial intelligence model that aims to emerge as one of the few Western alternatives to widely adopted open-source models developed by Chinese AI laboratories.
Unlike proprietary closed-source AI systems, Inkling is an open-weight model, allowing developers and enterprises to download, run and customise the underlying model according to their specific requirements.
The launch marks the first general-purpose AI model released by Thinking Machines, the San Francisco-based startup founded in 2025 by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati.
Previously, the company introduced its first product, Tinker, in October last year. The platform enables users to customise AI models, and the company has now made Inkling available through Tinker as well as other developer platforms.
Inkling features 975 billion parameters—the variables that determine how an AI model processes and understands information—making it one of the largest open-weight models introduced to date.
The launch comes as the Western open-source AI ecosystem continues to trail China’s rapidly growing AI landscape. The gap widened after Meta shifted its strategy toward proprietary AI development following the underwhelming reception of its Llama 4 open model.
As a result, many businesses have increasingly adopted Chinese open-source AI models as cost-effective alternatives to expensive proprietary systems.
For example, hedge fund Bridgewater Associates used Tinker to build a customised version of Qwen, Alibaba’s AI model, which the company said outperformed several leading proprietary models while operating at lower costs.
To demonstrate Inkling’s capabilities, Thinking Machines published benchmark results comparing the model against proprietary AI systems developed by Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, as well as several leading open-weight models, most of which originate from Chinese AI companies.
Although the competing models continue to lead overall performance, Inkling delivered competitive benchmark results, particularly in AI agent-related tasks, highlighting its potential to attract developers and enterprise customers seeking flexible and customisable AI solutions.
With the launch of Inkling, the AI startup aims to strengthen the Western open-weight AI ecosystem while expanding its presence in the increasingly competitive global artificial intelligence market.
