Thinking Machines Lab releases its first AI model, more than a year after former OpenAI executive Mira Murati founded the artificial intelligence startup.
The new model, called Inkling, is designed to be versatile and efficient, able to handle queries across a variety of media while balancing “cost and performance,” the company announced Wednesday. Inkling is also openweight, allowing developers to download and customize models without seeing training data or source code.
Thinking Machines said Inkling has shown superior performance in a variety of benchmarks compared to similar open-grade products. The company told Inkling: Although it has been trained “for strong performance across the board,” it is “not the most powerful model currently available, whether closed or open.”
Founded last February by Murati and other former OpenAI employees, Thinking Machines is part of a group of so-called AI neolabs that are trying to build more advanced artificial intelligence software that can compete with big labs like OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. Some of these companies, including Thinking Machines, extort large sums of money from investors before releasing their products.
Murati’s startup raised $2 billion last year at a valuation of $12 billion and is said to be in talks for a subsequent larger round. Since then, several employees have left her company to join companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and OpenAI.
Read more: OpenAI, Meta, SpaceXAI compete for more cost-effective AI models
With its new model, Thinking Machines could fill a gap in the U.S. market, which is seen as lagging behind Chinese developers in launching competitive open AI products. Once a leader in open model development, Meta has begun to focus on closed or proprietary models where customers pay a fee. Meanwhile, OpenAI released two open models last year, but its product portfolio is still dominated by paid products.
As businesses and individuals become more aware of the surge in spending on AI, some companies are turning to models available for free from China for certain tasks, raising concerns across the United States.
Thinking Machines is not looking to monetize new models. The startup currently makes money through a developer tool called Tinker for fine-tuning (or customizing) AI models, which it sells to customers such as hedge fund Bridgewater Associates to improve AI performance in financial operations.
Inkling is also part of Murati’s efforts to build “interaction models” designed to help people collaborate more naturally with AI.
“Our interactions are very rich,” she told Bloomberg last month. “Our interactions contain a lot of information: when we are silent, when we think, when we interrupt each other. Dialogue models can capture all these nuances.”
