AI startup Thinking Machines has presented a new artificial intelligence model that may become one of the few alternatives to popular open-source solutions from Chinese AI labs.
AI startup Thinking Machines has presented a new artificial intelligence model that may become one of the few alternatives to popular open-source solutions from Chinese AI labs.
The model, dubbed Inkling , is open-source, Reuters reports , meaning users can download, run and customize its underlying systems to their needs, unlike closed, proprietary models.
This is the first general-purpose model release from Thinking Machines, a San Francisco startup founded last year by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati .
Last October, Thinking Machines launched its first product, called Tinker, which helps with tuning AI models. The Inkling model is available on Tinker and other developer platforms.
The model has 975 billion parameters, making it one of the largest models of its kind.
The Western open source development ecosystem is currently lagging behind its Chinese counterpart, especially in the void created by Meta, which shifted its focus towards closed, proprietary solutions after the disappointing release of its open source model, Llama 4, last year.
For their part, businesses have begun to massively switch to Chinese models as the main alternative to expensive closed systems. In particular, the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates used the Tinker tool to create a custom version of Qwen, a model developed by the Chinese company Alibaba. According to the fund, this version outperformed the top commercial models, providing significantly lower costs.
