SAIL-VL2 Technical Report
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning
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Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce SAIL-VL2, an open-suite vision-language foundation model (LVM) for comprehensive multimodal understanding and reasoning. As the successor to SAIL-VL, SAIL-VL2 achieves state-of-the-art performance at the 2B and 8B parameter scales across diverse image and video benchmarks, demonstrating strong capabilities from fine-grained perception to complex reasoning. Its effectiveness is driven by three core innovations. First, a large-scale data curation pipeline with scoring and filtering strategies enhances both quality and distribution across captioning, OCR, QA, and video data, improving training efficiency. Second, a progressive training framework begins with a powerful pre-trained vision encoder (SAIL-ViT), advances through multimodal pre-training, and culminates in a thinking-fusion SFT-RL hybrid paradigm that systematically strengthens model capabilities. Third, architectural advances extend beyond dense LLMs to efficient sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) designs. With these contributions, SAIL-VL2 demonstrates competitive performance across 106 datasets and achieves state-of-the-art results on challenging reasoning benchmarks such as MMMU and MathVista. Furthermore, on the OpenCompass leaderboard, SAIL-VL2-2B ranks first among officially released open-source models under the 4B parameter scale, while serving as an efficient and extensible foundation for the open-source multimodal community.
Key facts. Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 76 of its 86 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Sep 2025.
Builds on
76 of 86 references.
Closest ancestors · 10
Same direction, newest first
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- 2024What matters when building vision-language models?3 May
- 2024MM-MATH: Advancing Multimodal Math Evaluation with Process Evaluation and Fine-grained Classification7 Apr
- 2024PuzzleVQA: Diagnosing Multimodal Reasoning Challenges of Language Models with Abstract Visual Patterns20 Mar
Other references · 66
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- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
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- 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
- 2014ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challengecited by 8,498
- 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,963
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38 more
- 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,719
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- 2016Making the V in VQA Matter: Elevating the Role of Image Understanding in Visual Question Answeringcited by 2,516
- 2023MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?cited by 2,141
- 2022Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answeringcited by 1,919
- 2020The Many Faces of Robustness: A Critical Analysis of Out-of-Distribution Generalizationcited by 1,850
- 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,834
- 2019Do ImageNet Classifiers Generalize to ImageNet?cited by 1,515
- 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,510
- 2016CLEVR: A Diagnostic Dataset for Compositional Language and Elementary Visual Reasoningcited by 1,457
- 2019Natural Adversarial Examplescited by 1,408
- 2023Video-LLaVA: Learning United Visual Representation by Alignment Before Projectioncited by 1,402
- 2020DocVQA: A Dataset for VQA on Document Imagescited by 1,317
- 2019OK-VQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Requiring External Knowledgecited by 1,121
- 2023ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captionscited by 1,005
- 2024Cambrian-1: A Fully Open, Vision-Centric Exploration of Multimodal LLMscited by 838
- 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 835
- 2024VideoLLaMA 2: Advancing Spatial-Temporal Modeling and Audio Understanding in Video-LLMscited by 771
- 2021NExT-QA:Next Phase of Question-Answering to Explaining Temporal Actionscited by 744
- 2024LongVideoBench: A Benchmark for Long-context Interleaved Video-Language Understandingcited by 665
- 2019MathQA: Towards Interpretable Math Word Problem Solving with Operation-Based Formalismscited by 662
- 2021VideoGPT: Video Generation using VQ-VAE and Transformerscited by 658
- 2024LLaVA-Video: Video Instruction Tuning With Synthetic Datacited by 583
- 2023OCRBench: On the Hidden Mystery of OCR in Large Multimodal Modelscited by 476
- 2024Magpie: Alignment Data Synthesis from Scratch by Prompting Aligned LLMs with Nothingcited by 346
- 2018DVQA: Understanding Data Visualizations via Question Answeringcited by 340
- 2019Scene Text Visual Question Answeringcited by 331
- 2025VL-Rethinker: Incentivizing Self-Reflection of Vision-Language Models with Reinforcement Learningcited by 323
- 2024InternVideo2: Scaling Foundation Models for Multimodal Video Understandingcited by 317
- 2023Perception Test: A Diagnostic Benchmark for Multimodal Video Modelscited by 314
- 2025MM-Eureka: Exploring the Frontiers of Multimodal Reasoning with Rule-based Reinforcement Learningcited by 303
- 2024Enhancing the Reasoning Ability of Multimodal Large Language Models via Mixed Preference Optimizationcited by 239
- 2024OpenMathInstruct-2: Accelerating AI for Math with Massive Open-Source Instruction Datacited by 200
- 2024Direct Preference Optimization of Video Large Multimodal Models from Language Model Rewardcited by 147
- 2024Aria: An Open Multimodal Native Mixture-of-Experts Modelcited by 138
- 2024MAmmoTH-VL: Eliciting Multimodal Reasoning with Instruction Tuning at Scalecited by 127
- 2024SlowFast-LLaVA: A Strong Training-Free Baseline for Video Large Language Modelscited by 125
- 2024Multimodal Autoregressive Pre-training of Large Vision Encoderscited by 109
50 most cited of 66 All 66 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 6; 2026: 8.
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- 2025CME-CAD: Heterogeneous Collaborative Multi-Expert Reinforcement Learning for CAD Code Generationcited by 19
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- 2026VisRef: Visual Refocusing while Thinking Improves Test-Time Scaling in Multi-Modal Large Reasoning Modelscited by 1
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- 2026POINTS-Long: Adaptive Dual-Mode Visual Reasoning in MLLMs13 Apr 2026
- 2026Text-Phase Synergy Network with Dual Priors for Unsupervised Cross-Domain Image Retrieval13 Mar 2026
- 2026OddGridBench: Exposing the Lack of Fine-Grained Visual Discrepancy Sensitivity in Multimodal Large Language Models10 Mar 2026
- 2026VisRef: Visual Refocusing while Thinking Improves Test-Time Scaling in Multi-Modal Large Reasoning Models27 Feb 2026
- 2026OmniFysics: Towards Physical Intelligence Evolution via Omni-Modal Signal Processing and Network Optimization5 Feb 2026
- 2026VISTA-Bench: Do Vision-Language Models Really Understand Visualized Text as Well as Pure Text?4 Feb 2026
- 2025CME-CAD: Heterogeneous Collaborative Multi-Expert Reinforcement Learning for CAD Code Generation29 Dec 2025
- 2025Self-Rewarded Multimodal Coherent Reasoning Across Diverse Visual Domains27 Dec 2025
- 2025MVI-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Robustness to Misleading Visual Inputs in LVLMs18 Nov 2025
- 2025SAIL-RL: Guiding MLLMs in When and How to Think via Dual-Reward RL Tuning4 Nov 2025
- 2025Mitigating Visual Context Degradation in Large Multimodal Models: A Training-Free Decoupled Agentic Frameworkcited by 2
- 2025SAIL-RL: Guiding MLLMs in When and How to Think via Dual-Reward RL Tuningcited by 2
- 2026VisRef: Visual Refocusing while Thinking Improves Test-Time Scaling in Multi-Modal Large Reasoning Modelscited by 1
- 2025Self-Rewarded Multimodal Coherent Reasoning Across Diverse Visual Domainscited by 0
- 2026POINTS-Long: Adaptive Dual-Mode Visual Reasoning in MLLMscited by 0
- 2026POINTS-Long: Adaptive Dual-Mode Visual Reasoning in MLLMs13 Apr 2026
- 2026VisRef: Visual Refocusing while Thinking Improves Test-Time Scaling in Multi-Modal Large Reasoning Models27 Feb 2026
- 2025Self-Rewarded Multimodal Coherent Reasoning Across Diverse Visual Domains27 Dec 2025
- 2025SAIL-RL: Guiding MLLMs in When and How to Think via Dual-Reward RL Tuning4 Nov 2025
- 2025Mitigating Visual Context Degradation in Large Multimodal Models: A Training-Free Decoupled Agentic Framework27 Sep 2025
- 2025MVI-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Robustness to Misleading Visual Inputs in LVLMscited by 15
- 2026VISTA-Bench: Do Vision-Language Models Really Understand Visualized Text as Well as Pure Text?cited by 8
- 2025AndesVL Technical Report: An Efficient Mobile-side Multimodal Large Language Modelcited by 4
- 2026OddGridBench: Exposing the Lack of Fine-Grained Visual Discrepancy Sensitivity in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 4
- 2026OddGridBench: Exposing the Lack of Fine-Grained Visual Discrepancy Sensitivity in Multimodal Large Language Models10 Mar 2026
- 2026VISTA-Bench: Do Vision-Language Models Really Understand Visualized Text as Well as Pure Text?4 Feb 2026
- 2025MVI-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Robustness to Misleading Visual Inputs in LVLMs18 Nov 2025
- 2025AndesVL Technical Report: An Efficient Mobile-side Multimodal Large Language Model13 Oct 2025
- 2025CME-CAD: Heterogeneous Collaborative Multi-Expert Reinforcement Learning for CAD Code Generationcited by 19
- 2026OmniFysics: Towards Physical Intelligence Evolution via Omni-Modal Signal Processing and Network Optimizationcited by 5
- 2026ViQ: Text-Aligned Visual Quantized Representations at Any Resolutioncited by 1
- 2026Text-Phase Synergy Network with Dual Priors for Unsupervised Cross-Domain Image Retrievalcited by 0
- 2026OmniFysics-Nano-V2 Technical Report: Understanding the Physical World Across Modalitiescited by 0
- 2026OmniFysics-Nano-V2 Technical Report: Understanding the Physical World Across Modalities22 Sep 2026
- 2026ViQ: Text-Aligned Visual Quantized Representations at Any Resolution25 Jun 2026
- 2026Text-Phase Synergy Network with Dual Priors for Unsupervised Cross-Domain Image Retrieval13 Mar 2026
- 2026OmniFysics: Towards Physical Intelligence Evolution via Omni-Modal Signal Processing and Network Optimization5 Feb 2026
- 2025CME-CAD: Heterogeneous Collaborative Multi-Expert Reinforcement Learning for CAD Code Generation29 Dec 2025
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