AI Coding Live News

Thinking Machines Launches Inkling 2 Small: 594B/17B MoE, Vendor-Reported AA Intelligence Index ~31; Tinker Inference and Fine-Tuning Now, Apache 2.0 Weights Planned Next Week

On November 5 Thinking Machines Lab introduced Inkling 2 Small, the first second-generation model: a 594B-total / 17B-active MoE with image input and variable thinking effort. The company reports an Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index score of about 31, with large gains versus prior Inkling models in agentic coding, vision and knowledge work. It is available now on Tinker for inference and fine-tuning with closed weights; full Apache 2.0 weights are planned next week after external safety testing. Tinker list pricing is about $0.30/$1.00 per million input/output tokens at 64K context.

Thinking Machines Launches Inkling 2 Small: 594B/17B MoE, Vendor-Reported AA Intelligence Index ~31; Tinker Inference and Fine-Tuning Now, Apache 2.0 Weights Planned Next Week

Key Takeaways

  • Specs (official): 594B total / 17B active MoE; Hybrid + Vision; variable effort; no audio (unlike prior Inkling)
  • Scores (vendor): AA Intelligence Index ~31; FrontierCode v2.0 ~25.4%; DeepSWE v1.1 ~72.1%; DesignArena Website Elo ~1340
  • Availability: Tinker Playground / fine-tune and sampling today; closed weights; Apache 2.0 full weights planned next week after safety tests
  • Pricing (Tinker docs): Prefill $0.30 / Sample $1.00 / Train $1.50 per 1M tokens at 64K; cached Prefill $0.03
  • Training note (official): joint RL ~1,075 steps and 17M+ rollouts; early checkpoints tested on OpenCode as Fledge-Alpha
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Linked Models & Agents:
⚡ Inkling 2 Small⚡ Inkling-Small⚡ Inkling🤖 OpenCode🤖 Tinker🌐 Thinking Machines

Cognition Launches SWE-2 Flash: A Fast Coding Model Built on Inkling-Small, 200 tok/s at One-Fifth the Price of SWE-2

Cognition released SWE-2 Flash on November 4 (19:55 UTC). Its official blog says the model is built on Thinking Machines' Inkling-Small (276B total, 12B active parameters) and, for the first time, adds a large mid-training stage before reinforcement learning, lifting FrontierCode 2.0 from 3.2% to 24.0% and Terminal-Bench 4.0 from 0.9% to 20.0%. Cognition says it beats every American open-weight model. It generates about 200 tokens per second at one-fifth the price and 3x the speed of SWE-2, and is free for Pro, Max and Teams users in Devin Desktop and CLI until the end of November. Weights are not public; a secure sharing program for partners and researchers is planned.

Cognition Launches SWE-2 Flash: A Fast Coding Model Built on Inkling-Small, 200 tok/s at One-Fifth the Price of SWE-2

Key Takeaways

  • SWE-2 Flash is built on Thinking Machines' Inkling-Small, with 276B total and 12B active parameters, about one-tenth the size of SWE-2 (2.8T-A104B).
  • Training adds a three-stage mid-training run on a few trillion tokens of scientific articles, blogs, code and other sources, followed by large-scale RL with higher-quality and more diverse tasks.
  • Official scores: FrontierCode 2.0 24.0 (SWE-2 scores 23.8), DeepSWE 1.1 60.1, Terminal-Bench 2.1 89.2, SWE-Bench Pro v2 Hard 89.9 and Terminal-Bench 4.0 20.0.
  • It runs at about 200 tokens per second versus about 60 for SWE-2, at one-fifth the price, and is free for Pro, Max and Teams users in Devin Desktop and CLI through November.
  • Citing cyber risk, the weights are not openly released; Cognition says details of a secure weight-access program will follow in the coming weeks.
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Linked Models & Agents:
⚡ SWE-2 Flash⚡ SWE-2⚡ Inkling-Small🤖 Devin🌐 Cognition🌐 Thinking Machines

TechCrunch/The Information: Thinking Machines in talks for Accel-led ~$1B at ≥$40B

TechCrunch, citing The Information and a source, says Thinking Machines — founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati — is in talks to raise about $1B at a valuation of at least ~$40B, with existing backer Accel discussing a lead. That would still be below the ~$50B it reportedly sought late last year. A source puts annual revenue run-rate above ~$100M, implying a very high revenue multiple. In July the lab launched open-weight Inkling and monetizes via Tinker's usage-based compute for adapting models on proprietary data. Its prior ~$2B seed (a16z-led with Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed, Conviction) valued it at ~$12B; since then co-founders including Lilian Weng and Luke Metz returned to OpenAI. Accel and Thinking Machines did not immediately comment.

Key Takeaways

  • Talks for ~$1B at ≥~$40B; Accel discussing lead
  • ARR reportedly >~$100M; still below ~$50B sought late last year
  • Product: open-weight Inkling + Tinker fine-tune compute; prior seed ~$2B / ~$12B
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