Apple Intelligence Foundation Language Models: Tech Report 2025
On the map: Mixture-of-experts → Efficient MoE training and inference systems
Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce two multilingual, multimodal foundation language models that power Apple Intelligence features across Apple devices and services: i a 3B-parameter on-device model optimized for Apple silicon through architectural innovations such as KV-cache sharing and 2-bit quantization-aware training; and ii a scalable server model built on a novel Parallel-Track Mixture-of-Experts PT-MoE transformer that combines track parallelism, mixture-of-experts sparse computation, and interleaved global-local attention to deliver high quality with competitive cost on Apple's Private Cloud Compute platform. Both models are trained on large-scale multilingual and multimodal datasets sourced via responsible web crawling, licensed corpora, and high-quality synthetic data, then further refined with supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning on a new asynchronous platform. The resulting models support several additional languages while understanding images and executing tool calls. In public benchmarks and human evaluations, both the server model and the on-device model match or surpass comparably sized open baselines. A new Swift-centric Foundation Models framework exposes guided generation, constrained tool calling, and LoRA adapter fine-tuning, allowing developers to integrate these capabilities with a few lines of code. The latest advancements in Apple Intelligence models are grounded in our Responsible AI approach with safeguards like content filtering and locale-specific evaluation, as well as our commitment to protecting our users' privacy with innovations like Private Cloud Compute.
Key facts. Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Efficient MoE training and inference systems, one of 12 directions in Mixture-of-experts. Builds on 24 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Jul 2025.
Builds on
24 of 31 references.
Closest ancestors · 2
Same direction, newest first
- 2024Revisiting MoE and Dense Speed-Accuracy Comparisons for LLM Training23 May
- 2022MegaBlocks: Efficient Sparse Training with Mixture-of-Experts29 Nov
Other references · 22
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
- 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 30,186
- 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
- 2017Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layercited by 3,509
- 2020Longformer: The Long-Document Transformercited by 3,413
- 2020GShard: Scaling Giant Models with Conditional Computation and Automatic Shardingcited by 1,631
- 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,228
- 2018Adafactor: Adaptive Learning Rates with Sublinear Memory Costcited by 905
- 2021GLaM: Efficient Scaling of Language Models with Mixture-of-Expertscited by 897
- 2024Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluatorscited by 897
- 2022Exploring Plain Vision Transformer Backbones for Object Detectioncited by 724
- 2024From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipelinecited by 500
10 more
- 2022ST-MoE: Designing Stable and Transferable Sparse Expert Modelscited by 399
- 2022Scaling Language-Image Pre-training via Maskingcited by 317
- 2024ToolSandbox: A Stateful, Conversational, Interactive Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Tool Use Capabilitiescited by 295
- 2024PiSSA: Principal Singular Values and Singular Vectors Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 269
- 2022Sparse Upcycling: Training Mixture-of-Experts from Dense Checkpointscited by 209
- 2024You Only Cache Once: Decoder-Decoder Architectures for Language Modelscited by 144
- 2025Rope to Nope and Back Again: A New Hybrid Attention Strategycited by 47
- 2025ParetoQ: Improving Scaling Laws in Extremely Low-bit LLM Quantizationcited by 46
- 2024Apple Intelligence Foundation Language Modelscited by 24
- 2025AXLearn: Modular, Hardware-Agnostic Large Model Trainingcited by 4
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 12; 2026: 16.
28 papers.
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- 2025Mid-Training of Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 21
- 2025FS-DFM: Fast and Accurate Long Text Generation with Few-Step Diffusion Language Modelscited by 17
- 2025Ferret-UI Lite: Lessons from Building Small On-Device GUI Agentscited by 16
- 2025MANZANO: A Simple and Scalable Unified Multimodal Model with a Hybrid Vision Tokenizercited by 15
- 2026HySparse: A Hybrid Sparse Attention Architecture with Oracle Token Selection and KV Cache Sharingcited by 10
- 2026Forget to Improve: On-Device LLM-Agent Continual Learning via Budget-Curated Memorycited by 9
- 2026MemoryLLM: Plug-n-Play Interpretable Feed-Forward Memory for Transformerscited by 5
- 2026Stop Rewarding Hallucinated Steps: Faithfulness-Aware Step-Level Reinforcement Learning for Small Reasoning Modelscited by 4
- 2025Data-Centric Lessons To Improve Speech-Language Pretrainingcited by 3
- 2025Scaling Up Efficient Small Language Models Serving and Deployment for Semantic Job Searchcited by 3
- 2026Beyond Binary Preferences: A Principled Framework for Reward Modeling with Ordinal Feedbackcited by 3
- 2025Mirror Speculative Decoding: Breaking the Serial Barrier in LLM Inferencecited by 2
16 more
- 2025ZK-APEX: Zero-Knowledge Approximate Personalized Unlearning with Executable Proofscited by 2
- 2026TOM: A Ternary Read-only Memory Accelerator for LLM-powered Edge Intelligencecited by 1
- 2026FlexServe: A Fast and Secure LLM Serving System for Mobile Devices with Flexible Resource Isolationcited by 1
- 2026LOCALUT: Harnessing Capacity-Computation Tradeoffs for LUT-Based Inference in DRAM-PIMcited by 1
- 2026Peak-Detector: Explainable Peak Detection via Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models in Physiological Signcited by 1
- 2025LLM-Augmented Symbolic NLU System for More Reliable Continuous Causal Statement Interpretationcited by 0
- 2025Toward Agentic Environments: GenAI and the Convergence of AI, Sustainability, and Human-Centric Spacescited by 0
- 2025Enabling Physical AI at the Edge: Hardware-Accelerated Recovery of System Dynamicscited by 0
- 2025WRAVAL -- WRiting Assist eVALuationcited by 0
- 2026Data-driven Clustering and Merging of Adapters for On-device Large Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026TriGen: NPU Architecture for End-to-End Acceleration of Large Language Models based on SW-HW Co-Designcited by 0
- 2026PLACID: Privacy-preserving Large language models for Acronym Clinical Inference and Disambiguationcited by 0
- 2026How Vulnerable Are Edge LLMs?cited by 0
- 2026Fortress: A Case Study in Stabilizing Search Recommendations via Temporal Data Augmentation and Feature Pruningcited by 0
- 2026FlexServe: A Fast and Secure LLM Serving System for Mobile Devices with Flexible Resource Isolationcited by 0
- 2026Fine-Tuning a 3B-Parameter LLM on a Smartphone: Characterizing Sustained Trainingcited by 0
- 2026Fine-Tuning a 3B-Parameter LLM on a Smartphone: Characterizing Sustained Training5 Oct 2026
- 2026Forget to Improve: On-Device LLM-Agent Continual Learning via Budget-Curated Memory23 Jun 2026
- 2026FlexServe: A Fast and Secure LLM Serving System for Mobile Devices with Flexible Resource Isolation22 Jun 2026
- 2026Peak-Detector: Explainable Peak Detection via Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models in Physiological Sign15 May 2026
- 2026Fortress: A Case Study in Stabilizing Search Recommendations via Temporal Data Augmentation and Feature Pruning14 May 2026
- 2026LOCALUT: Harnessing Capacity-Computation Tradeoffs for LUT-Based Inference in DRAM-PIM6 Apr 2026
- 2026How Vulnerable Are Edge LLMs?25 Mar 2026
- 2026PLACID: Privacy-preserving Large language models for Acronym Clinical Inference and Disambiguation24 Mar 2026
- 2026FlexServe: A Fast and Secure LLM Serving System for Mobile Devices with Flexible Resource Isolation10 Mar 2026
- 2026TOM: A Ternary Read-only Memory Accelerator for LLM-powered Edge Intelligence24 Feb 2026
- 2026Beyond Binary Preferences: A Principled Framework for Reward Modeling with Ordinal Feedback13 Feb 2026
- 2026TriGen: NPU Architecture for End-to-End Acceleration of Large Language Models based on SW-HW Co-Design13 Feb 2026
16 more
- 2026Stop Rewarding Hallucinated Steps: Faithfulness-Aware Step-Level Reinforcement Learning for Small Reasoning Models5 Feb 2026
- 2026HySparse: A Hybrid Sparse Attention Architecture with Oracle Token Selection and KV Cache Sharing3 Feb 2026
- 2026MemoryLLM: Plug-n-Play Interpretable Feed-Forward Memory for Transformers30 Jan 2026
- 2026Data-driven Clustering and Merging of Adapters for On-device Large Language Models24 Jan 2026
- 2025Enabling Physical AI at the Edge: Hardware-Accelerated Recovery of System Dynamics29 Dec 2025
- 2025WRAVAL -- WRiting Assist eVALuation19 Dec 2025
- 2025Toward Agentic Environments: GenAI and the Convergence of AI, Sustainability, and Human-Centric Spaces15 Dec 2025
- 2025ZK-APEX: Zero-Knowledge Approximate Personalized Unlearning with Executable Proofs9 Dec 2025
- 2025Scaling Up Efficient Small Language Models Serving and Deployment for Semantic Job Search25 Oct 2025
- 2025Data-Centric Lessons To Improve Speech-Language Pretraining22 Oct 2025
- 2025LLM-Augmented Symbolic NLU System for More Reliable Continuous Causal Statement Interpretation22 Oct 2025
- 2025Mirror Speculative Decoding: Breaking the Serial Barrier in LLM Inference15 Oct 2025
- 2025Mid-Training of Large Language Models: A Survey8 Oct 2025
- 2025Ferret-UI Lite: Lessons from Building Small On-Device GUI Agents30 Sep 2025
- 2025FS-DFM: Fast and Accurate Long Text Generation with Few-Step Diffusion Language Models24 Sep 2025
- 2025MANZANO: A Simple and Scalable Unified Multimodal Model with a Hybrid Vision Tokenizer19 Sep 2025
- 2025Mid-Training of Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 21
- 2026MemoryLLM: Plug-n-Play Interpretable Feed-Forward Memory for Transformerscited by 5
- 2025Data-Centric Lessons To Improve Speech-Language Pretrainingcited by 3
- 2025Scaling Up Efficient Small Language Models Serving and Deployment for Semantic Job Searchcited by 3
- 2026TOM: A Ternary Read-only Memory Accelerator for LLM-powered Edge Intelligencecited by 1
- 2026LOCALUT: Harnessing Capacity-Computation Tradeoffs for LUT-Based Inference in DRAM-PIMcited by 1
- 2026Peak-Detector: Explainable Peak Detection via Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models in Physiological Signcited by 1
- 2025LLM-Augmented Symbolic NLU System for More Reliable Continuous Causal Statement Interpretationcited by 0
- 2025Enabling Physical AI at the Edge: Hardware-Accelerated Recovery of System Dynamicscited by 0
- 2026Data-driven Clustering and Merging of Adapters for On-device Large Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026TriGen: NPU Architecture for End-to-End Acceleration of Large Language Models based on SW-HW Co-Designcited by 0
- 2026PLACID: Privacy-preserving Large language models for Acronym Clinical Inference and Disambiguationcited by 0
12 most cited of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026Fine-Tuning a 3B-Parameter LLM on a Smartphone: Characterizing Sustained Training5 Oct 2026
- 2026FlexServe: A Fast and Secure LLM Serving System for Mobile Devices with Flexible Resource Isolation22 Jun 2026
- 2026Peak-Detector: Explainable Peak Detection via Instruction-Tuned Large Language Models in Physiological Sign15 May 2026
- 2026Fortress: A Case Study in Stabilizing Search Recommendations via Temporal Data Augmentation and Feature Pruning14 May 2026
- 2026LOCALUT: Harnessing Capacity-Computation Tradeoffs for LUT-Based Inference in DRAM-PIM6 Apr 2026
- 2026How Vulnerable Are Edge LLMs?25 Mar 2026
- 2026PLACID: Privacy-preserving Large language models for Acronym Clinical Inference and Disambiguation24 Mar 2026
- 2026TOM: A Ternary Read-only Memory Accelerator for LLM-powered Edge Intelligence24 Feb 2026
- 2026TriGen: NPU Architecture for End-to-End Acceleration of Large Language Models based on SW-HW Co-Design13 Feb 2026
- 2026MemoryLLM: Plug-n-Play Interpretable Feed-Forward Memory for Transformers30 Jan 2026
- 2026Data-driven Clustering and Merging of Adapters for On-device Large Language Models24 Jan 2026
- 2025Enabling Physical AI at the Edge: Hardware-Accelerated Recovery of System Dynamics29 Dec 2025
12 newest of 16 All 16 (JSON)
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026MobileMoE: Scaling On-Device Mixture of Experts
- 2024On-Device Language Models: A Comprehensive Review
- 2025Towards Building Private LLMs: Exploring Multi-Node Expert Parallelism on Apple Silicon for Mixture-of-Experts Large Language Model
- 2023A Performance Evaluation of a Quantized Large Language Model on Various Smartphones
- 2023EdgeMoE: Empowering Sparse Large Language Models on Mobile Devices
- 2025GenieBlue: Integrating both Linguistic and Multimodal Capabilities for Large Language Models on Mobile Devices
- 2025Production-Grade Local LLM Inference on Apple Silicon: A Comparative Study of MLX, MLC-LLM, Ollama, llama.cpp, and PyTorch MPS
- 2024Aria: An Open Multimodal Native Mixture-of-Experts Model