Thinking Machines' open-weights Inkling 2 Small becomes the #1 US open model, #2 overall
Thom_Wolf · x · 2026-11-14
Thinking Machines released the open-weights Inkling 2 Small, which now ranks as the #1 US open model and #2 among all open models on Agent Arena (#22 overall).
- +2.9% net improvement across 11.5k real-world agentic sessions
- +10.9% Steerability, the highest of any open model
- Median cost per task of $0.26, about 4.7x cheaper than the top open model Kimi K3.1 Pro ($1.22)
- The only US model in the Agent Arena open top 10
Commenters frame it as a milestone for US open-source competitiveness against Chinese OSS models, with a larger 'Big' version anticipated.
Related event: Thinking Machines Open-Sources Inkling 2 Small, Top US Open Model on Arena(3 posts)→
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