Nov 5, 2026 · found Nov 8, 2026, 9:10 PM PT
Thinking Machines launches Inkling 2 Small with closed weights, Apache 2.0 promised
Verdict: Confirmed · Model releases · Benchmarks
The release and Artificial Analysis score of 31 are confirmed. The coding table is Thinking Machines' own, and the open-weights claim depends on a release that has not happened.
Thinking Machines released Inkling 2 Small on 5 November with closed weights and a promise of open weights later.
- Claim: A 594B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 17B active, available through the Tinker platform, with Apache 2.0 weights promised “next week” after external safety testing. Thinking Machines
- Evidence: Artificial Analysis scores it 31 on its Intelligence Index v5, tying Gemini 3.8 Flash (high). On FrontierCode 2.0 it beats Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium) 25% to 11%, but trails on Terminal-Bench 4.0, 13% to 30%. Artificial Analysis
- Caveats: The coding table in the vendor post, for example SWE-Bench Pro v2 Hard 86.3%, was not independently reproduced. The lower hallucination rate comes mostly from answering fewer questions. Artificial Analysis
- Why it matters: The headline “best open-weights model outside China” only holds if the weights ship. Check again in the week of 9 November. Thinking Machines
Verdict history
- Nov 8, 2026, 9:10 PM PT: Confirmed. Primary read (last 10k characters of the page not read). Index score confirmed by Artificial Analysis. Coding numbers such as SWE-Bench Pro v2 Hard 86.3% are vendor-reported. Recheck whether weights appear in the week of 9 Nov.
- Nov 9, 2026, 6:35 AM PT: Confirmed. Rechecked: the post still says weights come next week after safety testing, and the thinkingmachines Hugging Face org lists no Inkling 2 Small repo yet (only July Inkling-Small). Verdict unchanged.