# Corvid: Improving Multimodal Large Language Models Towards Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07424 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07424/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 74 of its 140 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Multimodal reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/multimodal-reasoning/)
- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/vlm-benchmarks-and-visual-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 74)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [Gemma 2: Improving Open Language Models at a Practical Size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00118/) (2024)
- [Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03314/) (2024)
- [MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02255/) (2023)
- [Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05271/) (2024)
- [OpenAI o1 System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16720/) (2024)
- [MM-Vet: Evaluating Large Multimodal Models for Integrated Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02490/) (2023)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [MiniCPM-V: A GPT-4V Level MLLM on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01800/) (2024)
- [mPLUG-Owl: Modularization Empowers Large Language Models with Multimodality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14178/) (2023)
- [ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12793/) (2023)
- [SEED-Bench: Benchmarking Multimodal LLMs with Generative Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16125/) (2023)
- [Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20330/) (2024)
- [Cambrian-1: A Fully Open, Vision-Centric Exploration of Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16860/) (2024)
- [Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17811/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-VL: Towards Real-World Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05525/) (2024)
- [Seq2SQL: Generating Structured Queries from Natural Language using Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.00103/) (2017)
- [Large Language Models Can Self-Improve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11610/) (2022)
- [LLaMA-Adapter V2: Parameter-Efficient Visual Instruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.15010/) (2023)
- [MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14624/) (2024)
- [BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceive](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12390/) (2024)
- [Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14804/) (2024)
- [Compositional Semantic Parsing on Semi-Structured Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.00305/) (2015)
- [VLMEvalKit: An Open-Source Toolkit for Evaluating Large Multi-Modality Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11691/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Multimodal Chain of Continuous Thought for Latent-Space Reasoning in Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12587/) (2025)
- [BusterX++: Towards Unified Cross-Modal AI-Generated Content Detection and Explanation with MLLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14632/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Agentic Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10991/) (2025)
- [Mull-Tokens: Modality-Agnostic Latent Thinking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10941/) (2025)
- [OneReason Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06260/) (2026)
- [CyPortQA: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15846/) (2025)
- [From Hindsight to Foresight: Self-Encouraged Hindsight Distillation for Knowledge-based Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11132/) (2025)
- [Learning Domain Knowledge in Multimodal Large Language Models through Reinforcement Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16419/) (2026)
- [Pseudo-Unification: Entropy Probing Reveals Divergent Information Patterns in Unified Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10949/) (2026)
- [Generate, Analyze, and Refine: Training-Free Sound Source Localization via MLLM Meta-Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06824/) (2026)
- [Food-R1: A Unified Multi-Task Food Vision-Language Model with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04986/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have demonstrated exceptional performance in multimodal perception and understanding. However, leading open-source MLLMs exhibit significant limitations in complex and structured reasoning, particularly in tasks requiring deep reasoning for decision-making and problem-solving. In this work, we present Corvid, an MLLM with enhanced chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning capabilities. Architecturally, Corvid incorporates a hybrid vision encoder for informative visual representation and a meticulously designed connector (GateMixer) to facilitate cross-modal alignment. To enhance Corvid's CoT reasoning capabilities, we introduce MCoT-Instruct-287K, a high-quality multimodal CoT instruction-following dataset, refined and standardized from diverse public reasoning sources. Leveraging this dataset, we fine-tune Corvid with a two-stage CoT-formatted training approach to progressively enhance its step-by-step reasoning abilities. Furthermore, we propose an effective inference-time scaling strategy that enables Corvid to mitigate over-reasoning and under-reasoning through self-verification. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Corvid outperforms existing o1-like MLLMs and state-of-the-art MLLMs with similar parameter scales, with notable strengths in mathematical reasoning and science problem-solving. Project page: https://mm-vl.github.io/corvid.