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Among current frontier open models, Inkling from Thinking Machines is now the strongest American open model with text, image, and audio input, Nemotron 3 Ultra from NVIDIA is a solid pick for long-running agents due to its cheap Mamba-hybrid long-context inference, and GLM-5.2 from Z.ai is currently the best open model for coding.

A roundup ranks Inkling as the top American open model, Nemotron 3 Ultra as best for long-running agents, and GLM-5.2 as the best open coding model, among other picks. ✦ AI generated

ByteByteGo · ByteByteGo Newsletter · 2026-07-18 · original ↗

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Inkling (Thinking Machines): released this week, now the strongest American open model. Text, image, and audio input. Nemotron 3 Ultra (NVIDIA): a solid choice for long-running agents. The Mamba hybrid keeps long-context inference cheap. GLM-5.2 (Z.ai): currently the best open model for coding.

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▦ Nvidia ▦ Thinking Machines ▦ Z.ai ✳ GLM-5.2

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Evidence · 1

GLM-5.2 Max reached 1595 on Code Arena: Frontend, surpassing Opus 4.8 and narrowing the gap to Claude Fable 5, while also posting near-parity agentic reliability scores against Opus 4.8 Max.AI Twitter Recap (AINews) · Latent Space · conf 65%

Extends · 1

Inkling is Thinking Machines Lab's first general model: fully open-weight, 975B total parameters, natively multimodal, and available on Tinker, Hugging Face, and partner platforms.Soumith Chintala · Latent Space · conf 60%