Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Ships Its First Model — And It's Open-Weight
Inkling, the debut model from the former OpenAI CTO's $12B startup, lands near Kimi 2.6 and Qwen 3.5 on early benchmarks and arrives with open weights, a pointed departure from her former employer.
Thinking Machines, the startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and valued at roughly $12 billion, has released its first model — and the most interesting thing about it isn't the benchmark score. It's the license. According to @helloluis, the model, called Inkling, launched with initial benchmarks that "place the model's performance somewhere near Kimi 2.6 or Qwen 3.5." @Reuters confirmed the framing plainly: an AI startup "launches an open-weight AI model."
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