LFM2 is a new generation of hybrid models developed by Liquid AI, specifically designed for edge AI and on-device deployment. It sets a new standard in terms of quality, speed, and memory efficiency.
We're releasing the weights of four post-trained checkpoints with 350M, 700M, 1.2B, and 2.6 parameters. They provide the following key features to create AI-powered edge applications:
Fast training & inference – LFM2 achieves 3x faster training compared to its previous generation. It also benefits from 2x faster decode and prefill speed on CPU compared to Qwen3.
Best performance – LFM2 outperforms similarly-sized models across multiple benchmark categories, including knowledge, mathematics, instruction following, and multilingual capabilities.
New architecture – LFM2 is a new hybrid Liquid model with multiplicative gates and short convolutions.
Flexible deployment – LFM2 runs efficiently on CPU, GPU, and NPU hardware for flexible deployment on smartphones, laptops, or vehicles.
Find more information about LFM2 in our blog post.
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.
Generation parameters: We recommend the following parameters:
temperature=0.3
min_p=0.15
repetition_penalty=1.05
Reasoning: LFM2-2.6B is the only model in this family to use dynamic hybrid reasoning (traces between <think> and </think> tokens) for complex or multilingual prompts.
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|>
Architecture: Hybrid model with multiplicative gates and short convolutions: 10 double-gated short-range LIV 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
If you haven't already, you can install the Transformers.js JavaScript library from NPM using:
npm i @huggingface/transformers
Example: Basic example
import { pipeline, TextStreamer } from "@huggingface/transformers";
// Create a text generation pipeline
const generator = await pipeline(
"text-generation",
"onnx-community/LFM2-2.6B-ONNX",
{ dtype: "q4" },
);
// Define the list of messages
const messages = [
{ role: "system", content: "You are a helpful assistant." },
{ role: "user", content: "What is the capital of France?" },
];
// Generate a response
const output = await generator(messages, {
max_new_tokens: 512,
do_sample: false,
streamer: new TextStreamer(generator.tokenizer, { skip_prompt: true, skip_special_tokens: true }),
});
console.log(output[0].generated_text.at(-1).content);
// The capital of France is Paris.
Example: Tool calling
import { AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, TextStreamer } from "@huggingface/transformers";
// Load tokenizer and model
const model_id = "onnx-community/LFM2-2.6B-ONNX";
const tokenizer = await AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id);
const model = await AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
model_id, { dtype: "q4", device: "webgpu" },
);
// Define tools and messages
const tools = [
{
name: "get_weather",
description: "Get current weather information for a location",
parameters: {
type: "object",
properties: {
location: {
type: "string",
description: "The city and state, e.g. San Francisco, CA",
},
unit: {
type: "string",
enum: ["celsius", "fahrenheit"],
description: "The unit of temperature to use",
},
},
required: ["location"],
},
},
];
const messages = [
{
role: "user",
content: "What's the weather like in New York?"
},
];
// Prepare inputs
const input = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, {
tools,
add_generation_prompt: true,
return_dict: true,
});
// Generate output
const sequences = await model.generate({
...input,
max_new_tokens: 512,
do_sample: false,
streamer: new TextStreamer(tokenizer, { skip_prompt: true, skip_special_tokens: false }),
});
// Decode and print the generated text
const response = tokenizer.batch_decode(
sequences.slice(null, [input.input_ids.dims[1], null]),
{ skip_special_tokens: true },
);
console.log(response[0]); // [get_weather(location="New York", unit="fahrenheit")]
LFM2 outperforms similar-sized models across different evaluation categories. We only report scores using instruct variants and non-thinking modes for consistency.
# custom terms: read the license before you download$ fw get onnx-community/LFM2-2.6B-ONNX
# manifest sha256 b1ca9cb81677… · 21.8 GB · 26 files$ fw verify ./LFM2-2.6B-ONNX onnx-community/LFM2-2.6B-ONNX
Terms that come with these files. LFM 1.0: commercial use only for organisations under US$10M annual revenue. Keep a copy of the license with the files.
Custom license (custom).Read the license text first. Open this panel to show the commands once you accept its terms.
fw.pyChecks the signature and every sha256, tries each source in order, resumes.