Thinking Machines has released Inkling 2 Small, a 594-billion-parameter model with 17 billion active parameters. The startup describes the model as the strongest Western open-weight model currently available. The release comes with a plan to make the model weights available under an Apache 2.0 license after safety testing is completed.
The model scores 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, surpassing its predecessor. Agentic benchmarks show significant gains, with AutomationBench-AA rising from 5 to 46 percent. The model excels in visual reasoning, achieving 81.6 percent on MMMU Pro and 64.7 percent on PerceptionBench. Training required 12 trillion tokens across all phases, with the RL phase using 3 trillion tokens on 2,048 GPUs.
The startup claims the model uses roughly 150,000 output tokens per task, costing about $1.18 per task. This makes the model a cost-effective option for developers looking for high performance. The Apache 2.0 license will allow for broad commercial use once safety testing is complete. You can now access a powerful open-source model that rivals proprietary options in specific benchmarks.
