Thinking Machines published its framework for deciding when to release open model weights, following its releases of the open-weight models Inkling and Inkling-Small. The company says release decisions turn on two questions: whether the model itself is safe, and whether the surrounding defensive ecosystem is ready. For Inkling, it ran internal evaluations across CBRN, offensive cybersecurity, broad misuse and a multimodal content suite spanning 17 languages and text, image and audio; commissioned external red-teaming from Scale AI (general misuse), Handshake AI (vulnerable-user interaction), FAR.AI (CBRN and cyber) and Apollo Research (loss-of-control behaviors); and fine-tuned helpful-only variants to elicit worst-case capability. It concluded neither model adds material risk beyond existing open-weight models.

• thinkingmachines.ai2026-07-31