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Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, claims top western open-weight model spot

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

Thinking Machines, a startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has released Inkling 2 Small. This new model, a mixture-of-experts with 594 billion parameters, is claimed to be the leading western open-weight model. While it offers improved agentic performance, this comes with a significant increase in token usage. AI

IMPACT Sets a new benchmark for western open-weight models, potentially influencing future development and competition in the field.

RANK_REASON Frontier-lab model release with system card. [lever_c_demoted from frontier_release: ic=1 ai=1.0]

Read on The Decoder →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, claims top western open-weight model spot

How we ranked this

Signal score
56 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Significant
Frontier-lab model release with system card. [lever_c_demoted from frontier_release: ic=1 ai=1.0]
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
model release
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
High
Clearly on-topic for AI-industry coverage.
Story freshness
Breaking (< 6h)
Fresh story with cross-source coverage still developing. Ranking may shift as more sources report.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. The Decoder TIER_1 English(EN) · Matthias Bastian ·

    Thinking Machines' Inkling 2 Small claims top spot among western open-weight models

    <p><img alt="" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" height="801" src="https://the-decoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/thinking_machines_inkling_logo.png" style="height: auto; margin-bottom: 10px;" width="1256" /></p> <p> Thinking Machines, the startup from former Op…

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