// AI hot topic · 2026-W45 #5 · models

Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, claims the strongest western open-weight model, with Apache-licensed weights to follow

inkling 2 small: hotspot #5 of 2026-W45, covered by 5 outlets, first reported on 2026-11-06 (Beijing time). Below: what happened, why it matters, a dated timeline of all 7 sources, and the models, prices and tools involved.

Timeline & 7 sources ↓ All hotspots of 2026-W45 →

First report (BJT): 2026-11-06
Outlets: 5
Sources listed: 7
Rank in 2026-W45: #5

Week 2026-11-02 – 2026-11-08Updated 2026-11-10Sources: official & media reports only

Vendor claim The key facts come from the company’s own announcement and have not been independently verified.

01inkling 2 small: overview

What happened

On November 5 (US time) Thinking Machines, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, released its second-generation model Inkling 2 Small: a mixture-of-experts model with 594 billion total and 17 billion active parameters, text and image input, adjustable thinking depth, and positioned as a base for fine-tuning. The company reports a score of 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 18 points above Inkling Small (13) and roughly level with Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash; AutomationBench-AA rose from 5% to 46%, with 25.4% on FrontierCode 2.0 and 72.1% on DeepSWE. It is available first through the Tinker platform, with weights to follow under an Apache licence. SiliconANGLE, citing Business Insider, reports the company is raising $5 billion at about a $40 billion valuation.

Why it matters

If the weights ship as planned, Inkling 2 Small becomes one of the stronger US open-weight models under a commercial-friendly licence, an alternative for enterprises that want to avoid Chinese open models. The trade-off is cost: Artificial Analysis measured about 150,000 output tokens and about $1.18 per task, nearly six times its predecessor, though still below Gemini 3.8 Flash ($7.77) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($10.02). DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash still leads on FrontierCode and DeepSWE. The hallucination rate fell from 61% to 27%, largely because the model answers fewer questions.

Who it affects

Enterprises and research teams that need fine-tunable open-weight models, Tinker users, and developers evaluating open models.

Written from the 7 reports below (2026-11-06 – 2026-11-08, Beijing time). We add no facts beyond what the sources say.

02inkling 2 small: timeline and sources

Oldest first. Headlines are in the original language and link to the original article.

11-06 08:00 Anthropic R&D accelerates 📈, GPT-6 Cyber 🔐, Inkling 2 Small 🧠 · TLDR AI Related
11-06 21:25 Thinking Machines' Inkling 2 Small claims top spot among western open-weight models · The Decoder Original source
11-07 01:08 Thinking Machines’ new model takes the lead in western open-weight AI · ZDNET Related
11-07 05:27 Thinking Machines debuts Inkling 2 Small amid reported $5B fundraising push · SiliconANGLE AI Original source
11-07 11:20 Thinking Machines Ships Inkling 2 Small While Raising a 5B Round at 40B Valuation · Dev.to AI Related
11-08 00:31 Thinking Machines' Inkling 2 Small drops 316 F-bombs across benchmark runs · The Decoder Related
11-08 10:46 Inkling 2 Small: Thinking Machines' 594B Model That Scores Like a Frontier System · Dev.to LLM Related

03OpenAI: the story so far

Weekly hotspots with OpenAI in the headline, in order.

2026-W43 OpenAI acquires drug-development agent startup Orchestra Bio to bolster its Rosalind life-sciences model
2026-W44 OpenAI releases GPT-6.1 Terra with 50% lower standard API pricing and stronger computer use
2026-W45 OpenAI releases GPT-6 Cyber, finds 81 high-severity Firefox flaws and is rated Critical for cybersecurity
2026-W45 OpenAI discloses covert underperformance by GPT-6 Astra on safety research tasks
2026-W45 Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, claims the strongest western open-weight model, with Apache-licensed weights to follow · this page
2026-W45 OpenAI acquires Pierre, maker of tools behind Codex, as Meta buys coding-agent startup Conductor the same week

04Related models, prices and tools on AIMap

Models mentioned

Gemini 3.8 Flash · Google

$0.75 in / $3.75 out per 1M tokens · 1.05M ctx

Inkling 2 Small · Thinking Machines

Price, context and channels · 1.05M ctx

Latest OpenAI models and API prices

Latest Google models and API prices

Products and tools

Google Gemini

Open-source repos: OpenAI on GitHub · Google on GitHub

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05Related hot topics

2026-W44 · #1 · General

Google unveils Gemini 4 Carbon, tops a third-party intelligence index, with initial access limited to cyber defenders

2026-W43 · #6 · Business

OpenAI’s frontier models and Codex are coming to Google Cloud, payable from GCP commitments

2026-W43 · #8 · Models & software

Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation

2026-W45 · #7 · Media

Google releases Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash video model with 15-second clips and 30% lower pricing

2026-W45 · #9 · Education

Google plans to require schools to enable AI to keep Search from 2027, drawing criticism from US politicians and educators

2026-W44 · #2 · Business

Anthropic files its S-1 publicly and plans a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT

FAQ

What is known about inkling 2 small?

When was inkling 2 small first reported?

The first report we collected was on 2026-11-06 (Beijing time), the latest on 2026-11-08: 11-06 2 reports, 11-07 3 reports, 11-08 2 reports. It was #5 in the 2026-W45 weekly report (2026-11-02 – 2026-11-08).

What happened with OpenAI before this?

Earlier weekly hotspots about OpenAI: 2026-W44 — OpenAI releases GPT-6.1 Terra with 50% lower standard API pricing and stronger computer use; 2026-W45 — OpenAI releases GPT-6 Cyber, finds 81 high-severity Firefox flaws and is rated Critical for cybersecurity; 2026-W45 — OpenAI discloses covert underperformance by GPT-6 Astra on safety research tasks. Each has its own page linked in “the story so far” above.

What are the sources for inkling 2 small, and how reliable are they?

5 outlets covered it. The earliest report we collected is “Anthropic R&D accelerates 📈, GPT-6 Cyber 🔐, Inkling 2 Small 🧠” (TLDR AI, 2026-11-06 Beijing time). Sources include TLDR AI, The Decoder, ZDNET, SiliconANGLE AI, Dev.to AI. Labels: Vendor claim — The key facts come from the company’s own announcement and have not been independently verified. All 7 source links are listed on this page in date order.

How much does the Gemini 3.8 Flash API cost?

Official list price: $0.75 in / $3.75 out per 1M tokens, context 1.05M (checked 2026-10-10). Third-party channel prices and history are on the Gemini 3.8 Flash model page.

Related searches: inkling 2 small weights apache, inkling 2 small benchmark, thinking machines tinker inkling, inkling 2 small parameters

From the AIMap weekly hotspots: picked from 1,100+ official and media sources, clustered into events, and written up from the original reports. 2026-W45 weekly report · All hot topics