Mira Murati Drops Her First AI Model After Leaving OpenAI—And It's Fully Open Source
Mira Murati, the founder of Thinking Machines Lab, has released her first AI model, Inkling, after leaving OpenAI in 2024. Inkling is a 975-billion-parameter multimodal AI model trained from scratch and is available under an Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Thinking Machines Lab, founded by Mira Murati, has released Inkling, a 975-billion-parameter multimodal AI model. Inkling outperforms Nvidia's Nemotron 3 Ultra on agentic tool use, but Chinese models GLM 5.2 and Kimi K2.6 still lead on several key benchmarks.
Imagine you have a super smart computer that can learn and understand many things. This is called a 'multimodal AI model.' Mira Murati, a smart person, made one of these computers called 'Inkling.' It's like a big brain that can do many things, and it's available for everyone to use and learn from.
Analysis
A $60B Vote of Confidence
Mira Murati's departure from OpenAI in 2024 was seen as a significant loss for the company. However, it has now emerged that her departure was a strategic move to focus on her own AI research and development. The release of Inkling, a 975-billion-parameter multimodal AI model, is a testament to her vision and expertise in the field.
Inkling's performance on agentic tool use is a notable achievement, outperforming Nvidia's Nemotron 3 Ultra by nearly 30 points. However, Chinese models GLM 5.2 and Kimi K2.6 still lead on several key benchmarks. This highlights the ongoing competition in the field of AI and the need for continued innovation and improvement.
The release of Inkling under an Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face is also significant. This allows researchers and developers to access and build upon the model, potentially leading to new breakthroughs and applications in the field of AI.
Thinking Machines Lab, the company founded by Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in July 2025. The company's reported plans to raise an additional $50 billion in November 2025 fell apart in January 2026. Despite this setback, the release of Inkling demonstrates the company's commitment to AI research and development.
The implications of Inkling's release are far-reaching and have significant potential to impact various industries and applications. As AI continues to evolve and improve, it is essential to have open and accessible models like Inkling that can be built upon and improved by the research community.
Key points
- Mira Murati has released her first AI model, Inkling, after leaving OpenAI in 2024.
- Inkling is a 975-billion-parameter multimodal AI model trained from scratch and available under an Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face.
- Inkling outperforms Nvidia's Nemotron 3 Ultra on agentic tool use, but Chinese models GLM 5.2 and Kimi K2.6 still lead on several key benchmarks.
- Thinking Machines Lab, the company founded by Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in July 2025.
The release of Inkling has the potential to accelerate AI research and development, leading to new breakthroughs and applications in various industries. The open license and availability of the model on Hugging Face may also attract more researchers and developers to contribute to the field.
The release of Inkling may not be enough to overcome the current dominance of Chinese models in the field of AI. Additionally, the ongoing competition in the field may lead to a focus on short-term gains rather than long-term innovation and improvement.
