Thinking Machines Releases Inkling 2 Small Model
The open-weights-bound model scored 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index and is available through the Tinker platform.
Updated on Nov. 6, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling 2 Small on November 5, 2026, a second-generation model in its Inkling family that scored 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5.0). The company launched the model with closed weights on its Tinker platform and plans to release the weights under an Apache 2.0 license after external safety testing.
Why it matters
The release extends the Inkling line that followed the company's first model in July 2026 and its Inkling-Small model later that month. Its plan to publish weights under a permissive license after safety review signals how the lab intends to balance openness with evaluation.
Inkling 2 Small uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture with 594 billion total parameters, of which 17 billion are active per request, and accepts image inputs with variable thinking effort. Tinker pricing is $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.00 per million output tokens, while the timing of the planned open-weights release remains unspecified.
The players
Thinking Machines Lab
An AI research company launched in February 2025 with a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation, developing the Inkling model family.
The details
Inkling 2 Small routes each request to a small subset of the model's internal experts, and training used a large integrated reinforcement-learning run that lets the model use visual feedback to adjust its work. The model launched only through Tinker with closed weights, and the company says the weights will follow under Apache 2.0 after external safety testing.
Timeline
February 2025: Thinking Machines Lab launched with a $2 billion seed round.
July 15, 2026: The first Inkling model arrived.
July 30, 2026: Inkling-Small followed.
November 5, 2026: Inkling 2 Small was released on Tinker with closed weights.
Roadmap
Thinking Machines Lab was founded in February 2025 with a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation, and Inkling 2 Small is the second-generation model in a family that began with a 975 billion-parameter first release in July 2026. The planned Apache 2.0 release of the weights would mark a shift from the closed-weights launch on Tinker that this model currently uses.
Developers can access Inkling 2 Small now through Tinker at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.00 per million output tokens, with image inputs supported. The weights are not yet downloadable, so self-hosting depends on the planned open-weights release.
The takeaway
Developers evaluating Inkling 2 Small should weigh the current Tinker token pricing against the eventual open-weights option. Watching for the post-safety-testing weight release will show whether the model becomes self-hostable.
What happens next
Thinking Machines plans to release the Inkling 2 Small weights under an Apache 2.0 license after external safety testing, though no date for that release was provided.
Further reading
For broader context on model releases and benchmarks, see the Artificial Intelligence section.
