Open-weights AI gets two releases in one day

Thinking Machines released Inkling, a new open-weights model, and Grok Build went open source on the same day. Both generated real discussion. Inkling drew skepticism about whether it justifies its size relative to GLM 5.2, but commenters were genuinely excited to see Thinking Machines ship a model instead of just blog posts. The Grok Build release was framed partly as a reactive move after the controversy over Grok's terms-of-service language about user working directories.

The pattern connecting them: open-weights releases are now happening fast enough that a single day can have two meaningful ones. Commenters in the Inkling thread floated the idea that 'America needs its own DeepSeek,' and several said they root for open Chinese models because they feel there is no western alternative with serious open-weights momentum. That frustration is now producing actual supply.

The nuance: neither release is clearly dominant. Inkling is roughly 30% larger than GLM 5.2 but does not clearly outperform it, which means the open-weights leaderboard is genuinely contested rather than settled.