Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, scoring 31 on the Intelligence Index
Thinking Machines releases the reasoning model Inkling 2 Small, which scores 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0.1, 18 points higher than Inkling Small and on par with Gemini 3.8 Flash (high). The model is initially offered as closed-source through the Tinker platform and Tinker Playground, with plans to later open its weights under the Apache 2.0 license; it has 594B total parameters and 17B activated parameters, priced at $0.30/$1.00 per 1M input/output tokens. Evaluations show notable gains on agentic tasks, with AutomationBench-AA rising from 5% to 46% and FrontierCode 2.0 from 5% to 25%, but Terminal-Bench 4.0 stands at 13%, below Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium)'s 30%; average output per task is about 150K tokens, at a cost of $1.18, roughly 6 times that of Inkling Small.
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SelectedAI score 70
Third-party evaluations provide item-by-item comparisons of Inkling 2 Small against models such as Gemini and Claude on intelligence index, coding, and cost, making it easier to judge its positioning.
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Thinking Machines has released Inkling 2 Small, scoring 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index - their plan to release its weights would make it the highest-scoring open weights model developed outside China based on current rankings
Inkling 2 Small is launching as a proprietary model, available first-party through @thinkymachines' Tinker platform and Tinker Playground, with weights to be released at a later date. Its score is up 18 points from Inkling Small, with ~4x as many output tokens per task. It matches @GoogleDeepMind's Gemini 3.8 Flash (high) and surpasses @XiaomiMiMo's MiMo-V2.6-Pro on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0.1.
Key takeaways:
➤ Large gains over Inkling Small, especially on agentic tasks: AutomationBench-AA rises from 5% to 46% and FrontierCode 2.0 from 5% to 25%. HLE-Diamond also rises from 12% to 29%.
➤ Different coding strengths from Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium): Inkling 2 Small scores 25% on FrontierCode 2.0 vs. 11% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium), but 13% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 vs. 30%.
➤ Creative agentic scores above Claude Haiku 5.5 and Grok 4.7 on AA-3D: Inkling 2 Small also scores above Gemini 3.8 Flash on both AA-3D and Code2Video-AA, but behind Claude Sonnet 5.5 on both.
➤ Research-level physics improves, but trails Gemini 3.8 Flash (high): Inkling 2 Small scores 56% on CritPt v2, up from 34% for Inkling Small, vs. 65% for Gemini 3.8 Flash (high).
➤ Fewer hallucinations from more selective answering: On AA-Omniscience v1.1, the hallucination rate falls from Inkling Small's 61% to 27%, while accuracy rises from 32% to 34% and the attempt rate falls from 77% to 53%.
➤ ~4x as many output tokens: Inkling 2 Small averages ~150K output tokens per Intelligence Index task vs. ~37K for Inkling Small, ~31K for Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium), and ~99K for Gemini 3.8 Flash (high).
➤ Almost 6x the cost of Inkling Small, but cheaper than several other models with similar Intelligence Index scores: Inkling 2 Small costs $1.18 per Intelligence Index task vs. $0.20 for Inkling Small, $7.77 for Gemini 3.8 Flash (high), and $10.02 for Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium).
Key model details:
➤ Type: Proprietary reasoning model at launch; Apache 2.0 weights release planned (date unconfirmed)
➤ Modalities: Text and image input, text output
➤ Size: 594B total parameters / 17B active parameters
➤ Pricing: $0.30/$1.00 per 1M input/output tokens ($0.03 per 1M cached input tokens)
➤ Availability at launch: Tinker and Tinker Playground
Congratulations to the team at @thinkymachines on the release!