Thinking Machines’ First AI Model, California Loses $3.2B to Texas, TSMC Adds $100B | Diet TBPN
July 16, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThinking Machines Ships Its First Model, California Loses a $3.2B Project, TSMC Bets Big on the U.S.
The episode covers a wide set of developments: the release of Thinking Machines Lab's first open-weight model, California losing a major defense shipyard to Texas, TSMC's record spending plans, and a handful of smaller items across creator economy, Disney's valuation, and New York City's appeal. The dominant thread running through several stories is the intensifying competition — between AI labs, between U.S. states for industrial investment, and between geopolitical blocs over semiconductor and AI supply chains.
Thinking Machines Lab Releases Inkling — Open Weights, Built for Fine-Tuning
Mira Murati's AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab (TML), released its first model on Wednesday. Called Inkling, it is an open-weights model with 975 billion total parameters, though only about 41 billion are active at any moment — a sparse architecture rather than a dense model. The Wall Street Journal reported that Murati is betting on more customizable AI models to chip away at the lead held by OpenAI and Anthropic.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Show Open & Tribute to Charlie Munger** - Guest host Tyler Cosgrove joins as the crew plays a montage of Warren Buffett deferring to Charlie Munger at Berkshire meetings
- 2 (00:55) **Thinking Machines Lab Releases First AI Model "Inkling"** - Mira Murati's startup releases an open-weights model designed to chip away at OpenAI and Anthropic's lead
- 3 (03:37) **Inkling's Market Position & Benchmark Performance** - Early analysis positions the model as the best open-weight model outside of China
- 4 (04:44) **Distillation Debate Around Inkling** - Jack Morris of Engram Labs claims Inkling is the only non-distilled open-weight model, but the claim is disputed
- 5 (07:10) **Anthropic Accuses Chinese AI Labs of Mass Distillation** - Tarin Chhabra calls out Zhipu AI specifically for distilling Claude and OpenAI models
- 6 (08:58) **Geopolitical Implications of Distillation** - Anthropic suggests US government should clamp down on Chinese model adoption globally
- 7 (10:12) **OpenAI's Design Taste Improvement** - Grace Lee reverse-engineers how GPT-5.5 Soul learned to avoid "bad AI smell" in web design
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.
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