# Inkling 2 Small — Thinking Machines' 594B MoE, weights due next week

> Thinking Machines' second-generation model is a 594B MoE with 17B active parameters, live on Tinker.

- Org: Thinking Machines Lab
- Date: 2026-11-05
- Category: model
- Source: https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/inkling-2-small/
- Canonical page: https://ai-tldr.dev/releases/thinking-machines-inkling-2-small/

## In short

Inkling 2 Small is a 594B-parameter MoE model with 17B active, now on Tinker with closed weights. Thinking Machines says Apache 2.0 weights follow next week, after safety testing.

## What it is

Inkling 2 Small is the first model of Thinking Machines Lab's second Inkling generation. It is a sparse mixture-of-experts transformer with 594B total and 17B active parameters. It reads text and images, supports variable reasoning effort, and handles context up to 1M tokens.

## How it works

The model was pretrained natively in NVFP4 on NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 racks, 8.4T tokens in the first phase. The main reinforcement-learning run took 1,075 steps and over 17M rollouts across 9 days on 2,048 GPUs. Long tasks use compaction, so agents can work past the 256K training context.

## Why it matters

Thinking Machines reports a score of 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. For teams that want a US open-weight base to fine-tune, the Apache 2.0 release planned for next week is the part to watch.

## Who it's for

teams fine-tuning open models, coding-agent builders

## Try it

Tinker Playground: https://tinker.thinkingmachines.ai/playground

## Quick facts

- Maker: Thinking Machines Lab
- Parameters: 594B total, 17B active (MoE)
- Context window: Up to 1M tokens
- Inputs: Text and image (no audio)
- Availability: Tinker, closed weights for now
- License: Apache 2.0 planned for weights
- AA Intelligence Index: 31

## FAQ

### Are the Inkling 2 Small weights open?

Not yet. Inkling 2 Small is available through Tinker with closed weights. Thinking Machines Lab says it intends to release the full weights under Apache 2.0 next week, after external safety testing and red-teaming. That is a stated plan, not a confirmed date.

### How does Inkling 2 Small compare with the first Inkling on safety?

Thinking Machines reports an internal misbehavior rate of 14.9 for Inkling 2 Small, against 66.8 for the first Inkling (lower is better). The post also says the model still trails GPT-6.1 Sol on its alignment evaluations.

### How does Inkling 2 Small do on coding benchmarks?

Thinking Machines lists 72.1% on DeepSWE v1.1, 86.3% on SWE-Bench Pro v2 (Hard) and 81.6% on Vibe Code Bench v1.1 for Inkling 2 Small. The post compares these with about a dozen open and closed models in its own tables.

### Does Inkling 2 Small support audio or images?

Inkling 2 Small accepts text and image inputs and produces text. It does not support audio input, unlike the earlier Inkling-Small. The vision encoder has 292M parameters and is based on Perception Encoder.

## Links

- [Announcement](https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/inkling-2-small/)
- [Model Card](https://thinkingmachines.ai/model-card/inkling-2-small/)
- [Tinker Docs](https://tinker-docs.thinkingmachines.ai/tinker/)
- [Tinker Cookbook](https://github.com/thinking-machines-lab/tinker-cookbook)