[AINews] Thinky's Inkling: 975B-A41B multimodal, new best American Apache 2.0 open model (with Inkling-Small, 276B-A12B)
- ID
- 5128
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 16 Jul 2026, 2:18 PM
- Fetched
- 16 Jul 2026, 2:49 PM
- Provider
- Latent Space
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://www.latent.space/p/ainews-thinkys-inkling-975b-a41b
- Source URL
- https://www.latent.space/feed
Summary
- Score
- 7.5
- Created
- 16 Jul 2026, 2:50 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_ml_learnersai_agent_userssaas_founders
What happened
Thinky has released its first full LLM, Inkling, a 975B parameter (41B active) multimodal model under Apache 2.0 open weights, along with a smaller Inkling-Small variant at 276B parameters (12B active). The model is positioned as a new best-in-class American Apache 2.0 open model.
Why it matters
New large-scale open-weights multimodal models give Malaysian developers and AI builders more options for self-hosting or fine-tuning without vendor lock-in. Apache 2.0 licensing means commercial use is straightforward, which matters for local startups and SaaS founders evaluating cost-effective model deployment. The MoE architecture (sparse activation) could make these models more practical to serve than dense equivalents at similar total parameter counts.
Discussion angle
Compare Inkling's Apache 2.0 licensing and MoE sparse activation against existing open models like Llama or Qwen—does this change the calculus for Malaysian teams considering self-hosting versus API-based model access?