A Year of Tinker: Thinking Machines on Turning Expertise into Model Weights You Own

miramurati · x · 2026-10-16

Thinking Machines Lab published a one-year retrospective of Tinker, its post-training API that reduces fine-tuning to four API functions (sample, forwardbackward, optimstep, savestate) while users keep their data and training loop and Tinker manages GPUs and checkpoints.

Co-founder Mira Murati highlighted watching people turn their own expertise into model weights they own, arguing the custom-model market stayed small not because fine-tuning lacks value but because no post-training platform was versatile, reliable, fast, and cheap enough.

Related event: Thinking Machines Marks Tinker's First Year of Accessible Fine-Tuning(3 posts)→

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