Thinking Machines has launched its first open-weight AI model, signaling Mira Murati’s startup will compete on openness as enterprises reassess model control.

Singapore-based Akro AI has reportedly raised a $700,000 pre-seed round, according to Tech in Asia and DealStreetAsia deal coverage. Publicly available source evidence is thin, leaving key details such as investors, product scope, and timing unclear. Even so, the deal stands out as another data point in Southeast Asia’s early-stage AI funding market, where smaller rounds increasingly matter for builders testing narrow enterprise use cases before larger capital commitments arrive.

Arena, the Berkeley-born startup behind one of the most widely watched crowdsourced AI model leaderboards, told TechCrunch it has reached $100 million in annualized run-rate revenue roughly eight months after launching its commercial evaluation product. The milestone suggests that AI benchmarking and post-training feedback are becoming a business in their own right, not just a research exercise, though the company says its revenue is consumption-based rather than contracted recurring ARR.