Specifically trained on instruction following, knowledge, and math, it delivers particularly strong performance compared to other 3B models. In particular, its IFBench score surpasses DeepSeek R1-0528, a model 263 times larger.

Find more information about LFM2 in our blog post.

📄 Model details

Due to their small size, we recommend fine-tuning LFM2 models on narrow use cases to maximize performance. They are particularly suited for agentic tasks, data extraction, RAG, creative writing, and multi-turn conversations. However, we do not recommend using them for tasks that are knowledge-intensive or require programming skills.

Property	LFM2-350M	LFM2-700M	LFM2-1.2B	LFM2-2.6B
Parameters	354,483,968	742,489,344	1,170,340,608	2,569,272,320
Layers	16 (10 conv + 6 attn)	16 (10 conv + 6 attn)	16 (10 conv + 6 attn)	30 (22 conv + 8 attn)
Context length	32,768 tokens	32,768 tokens	32,768 tokens	32,768 tokens
Vocabulary size	65,536	65,536	65,536	65,536
Precision	bfloat16	bfloat16	bfloat16	bfloat16
Training budget	10 trillion tokens	10 trillion tokens	10 trillion tokens	10 trillion tokens
License	LFM Open License v1.0	LFM Open License v1.0	LFM Open License v1.0	LFM Open License v1.0

Supported languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

Generation parameters: We recommend the following parameters:

temperature=0.3
min_p=0.15
repetition_penalty=1.05

Chat template: LFM2 uses a ChatML-like chat template as follows:

<|startoftext|><|im_start|>system
You are a helpful assistant trained by Liquid AI.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
What is C. elegans?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It's a tiny nematode that lives in temperate soil environments.<|im_end|>

You can automatically apply it using the dedicated .apply_chat_template() function from Hugging Face transformers.

Tool use: It consists of four main steps:

Function definition: LFM2 takes JSON function definitions as input (JSON objects between <|tool_list_start|> and <|tool_list_end|> special tokens), usually in the system prompt
Function call: LFM2 writes Pythonic function calls (a Python list between <|tool_call_start|> and <|tool_call_end|> special tokens), as the assistant answer.
Function execution: The function call is executed and the result is returned (string between <|tool_response_start|> and <|tool_response_end|> special tokens), as a "tool" role.
Final answer: LFM2 interprets the outcome of the function call to address the original user prompt in plain text.

Here is a simple example of a conversation using tool use:

<|startoftext|><|im_start|>system
List of tools: <|tool_list_start|>[{"name": "get_candidate_status", "description": "Retrieves the current status of a candidate in the recruitment process", "parameters": {"type": "object", "properties": {"candidate_id": {"type": "string", "description": "Unique identifier for the candidate"}}, "required": ["candidate_id"]}}]<|tool_list_end|><|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
What is the current status of candidate ID 12345?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
<|tool_call_start|>[get_candidate_status(candidate_id="12345")]<|tool_call_end|>Checking the current status of candidate ID 12345.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>tool
<|tool_response_start|>[{"candidate_id": "12345", "status": "Interview Scheduled", "position": "Clinical Research Associate", "date": "2023-11-20"}]<|tool_response_end|><|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The candidate with ID 12345 is currently in the "Interview Scheduled" stage for the position of Clinical Research Associate, with an interview date set for 2023-11-20.<|im_end|>

You can directly pass tools as JSON schema or Python functions with .apply_chat_template() as shown in this page to automatically format the system prompt.

Architecture: Hybrid model with multiplicative gates and short convolutions: 10 double-gated short-range convolution blocks and 6 grouped query attention (GQA) blocks.

Pre-training mixture: Approximately 75% English, 20% multilingual, and 5% code data sourced from the web and licensed materials.

Training approach:

Very large-scale SFT on 50% downstream tasks, 50% general domains
Custom DPO with length normalization and semi-online datasets
Iterative model merging
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards

🏃 How to run LFM2

1. Transformers

To run LFM2, you need to install Hugging Face transformers v4.55 or a more recent version as follows:

pip install -U transformers

Here is an example of how to generate an answer with transformers in Python:

python

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

# Load model and tokenizer
model_id = "LiquidAI/LFM2-2.6B-Exp"
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    device_map="auto",
    torch_dtype="bfloat16",
#    attn_implementation="flash_attention_2" <- uncomment on compatible GPU
)
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)

# Generate answer
prompt = "What is C. elegans?"
input_ids = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
    [{"role": "user", "content": prompt}],
    add_generation_prompt=True,
    return_tensors="pt",
    tokenize=True,
).to(model.device)

output = model.generate(
    input_ids,
    do_sample=True,
    temperature=0.3,
    min_p=0.15,
    repetition_penalty=1.05,
    max_new_tokens=512,
)

print(tokenizer.decode(output[0], skip_special_tokens=False))

# <|startoftext|><|im_start|>user
# What is C. elegans?<|im_end|>
# <|im_start|>assistant
# C. elegans, also known as Caenorhabditis elegans, is a small, free-living
# nematode worm (roundworm) that belongs to the phylum Nematoda.

You can directly run and test the model with this Colab notebook.

2. vLLM

You need to install vLLM v0.10.2 or a more recent version as follows:

uv pip install vllm==0.10.2 --extra-index-url https://wheels.vllm.ai/0.10.2/ --torch-backend=auto

Here is an example of how to use it for inference:

python

from vllm import LLM, SamplingParams

prompts = [
    "What is C. elegans?",
    "Say hi in JSON format",
    "Define AI in Spanish"
]
sampling_params = SamplingParams(temperature=0.3, min_p=0.15, repetition_penalty=1.05)

llm = LLM(model="LiquidAI/LFM2-2.6B-Exp")

outputs = llm.generate(prompts, sampling_params)

for output in outputs:
    prompt = output.prompt
    generated_text = output.outputs[0].text
    print(f"Prompt: {prompt!r}, Generated text: {generated_text!r}")

3. llama.cpp

You can run LFM2 with llama.cpp using its GGUF checkpoint. Find more information in the model card.

🔧 How to fine-tune LFM2

We recommend fine-tuning LFM2 models on your use cases to maximize performance.

Notebook	Description	Link
SFT (Unsloth)	Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) notebook with a LoRA adapter using Unsloth.
SFT (TRL)	Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) notebook with a LoRA adapter using TRL.
DPO (TRL)	Preference alignment with Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) using TRL.

📬 Contact

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If you are interested in custom solutions with edge deployment, please contact our sales team.

Citation

@article{liquidai2025lfm2,
 title={LFM2 Technical Report},
 author={Liquid AI},
 journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.23404},
 year={2025}
}