A $1,500 foundation model that rivals larger LLMs - Venturebeat
Quick Answer
This paper shows that Researchers at Sapient developed HRM-Text, a 1B-parameter foundation model trained from scratch for $1,500, achieving competitive performance against larger LLMs on industry benchmarks.
Quick Take
Researchers at Sapient developed HRM-Text, a 1B-parameter foundation model trained from scratch for $1,500, achieving competitive performance against larger LLMs on industry benchmarks. This model utilizes a Hierarchical Recurrent Model architecture, focusing on instruction-response pairs instead of traditional autoregressive methods, significantly reducing training costs and data requirements.
Key Points
- HRM-Text trained for $1,500, a fraction of typical LLM costs.
- Utilizes a Hierarchical Recurrent Model for enhanced sample efficiency.
- Achieved competitive performance against larger open models.
- Focuses on instruction-response pairs rather than raw text.
- Reduces the need for extensive internet-scale data.
Article Excerpt
From source RSS / original summary# Researchers say they trained a foundation model from scratch for about $1,500. Training a foundation LLM from scratch costs millions and requires internet-scale data — which is why most enterprises don't bother. To overcome this brute-force scaling dogma, researchers at Sapient developed HRM-Text, which replaces standard Transformers with a highly sample-efficient Hierarchical Recurrent Model (HRM), an architecture they first introduced last year.
Instead of brute-force autoregressive prediction on raw text, HRM-Text trains exclusively on instruction-response pairs. The researchers were able to train a 1B-parameter HRM-Text from scratch at a fraction of the cost and tokens of normal LLMs. Their model achieved performance competitive with much larger open models on key industry benchmarks
Reader Mode unavailable (could not extract clean content).
Want this in your inbox every morning?
Daily brief at your local 8am — bilingual EN/中文, free.
More from WebSearch (Tavily)
See more →Stop just chatting with AI. Learn to build production-ready software in ...
The 2026 Bootcamp offers hands-on training in building production-ready software using Generative AI, LLM applications, and AI agents, emphasizing practical skills over casual interaction with AI. Participants will learn to develop applications like Cursor AI, preparing them for real-world challenges in AI development.