Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab unveils a 975‑billion‑parameter open‑weights model, the largest American LLM to date, offering developers a highly permissive Apache‑licensed alternative to proprietary systems.

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has announced the release of Inkling, a 975‑billion‑parameter language model that is both open‑weights and Apache‑licensed, marking the largest American LLM made publicly available so far.

A new frontier in open‑source AI

Inkling is being launched under Murati’s new venture, Thinking Machines Lab, which aims to provide developers with a highly permissive alternative to the closed, commercial models that dominate the market.

The model’s size—975 billion parameters—places it in the same tier as the most advanced proprietary systems, yet its open‑weights architecture allows anyone to download, fine‑tune, and integrate it without restrictive licensing.

Technical highlights

Inkling supports a broad range of tasks, from natural‑language generation to code assistance, and is optimized for both cloud and on‑premise deployments. Its Apache 2.0 license grants users the freedom to modify and redistribute the model without the typical usage caps imposed by commercial providers.

  • 975 billion parameters
  • Apache‑licensed, fully open‑weights
  • Designed for scalable inference on commodity hardware
  • Supports multi‑modal inputs in future updates

Why this matters for the AI ecosystem

By offering a model of this scale under an open license, Murati challenges the prevailing trend of closed‑source AI development and could accelerate innovation among startups, academic researchers, and independent developers.

The release also signals a strategic shift, positioning Thinking Machines Lab as a direct competitor to the proprietary offerings from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

“We want to democratize access to frontier AI capabilities, not gatekeep them.”

Industry observers note that Inkling’s open nature may spur a wave of community‑driven improvements, similar to how open‑source software transformed other technology sectors.

Read the report