EU Open-Weights ML Foundry · Active Field Report

Discrete Architecture.
Extreme Compute Efficiency.

Katana 1.1B /
Pretrained for Code & AST Synthesis Pretrained for Mathematical Proofs Pretrained for Agentic Workflows Pretrained for Multi-Language Logic

We build open-weight foundation models from scratch. Combining content-conditional modulation with proprietary memory-factored optimization to unlock deep semantic generalization early in pretraining.

Model Scale
1.12B
36 Layers · 1.02B Non-Emb
Hardware Baseline
~8.59 GB
12GB VRAM · Zero Offload
Step Dynamics
32,768 tk
~14.37s / Step · ~2,280 tok/s
Curated Corpus
84.42B
52% Code & Math Composition

Maximum Science Per FLOP.

We trained 1.12B parameters from scratch on a single consumer 12GB GPU with full optimizer state resident in ~8.59 GB VRAM — discovering structural organization at under 0.9% of corpus exposure and deepening it through ~7.00B tokens (step 414k+), with best-eval perplexity breaking into the teens at 19.58 (held-out loss 2.974, batch loss 2.645, Top-1 accuracy >45–51%).

Our custom trainer and architectural inductive biases are proven. Dedicated cluster compute scales this efficiency into domain-dominant open foundation models.

Optimizer Footprint 4.5 GB (AdamW) → Sub-GB · Proprietary
Pretraining Baseline Cluster → Single 12GB GPU
Sustained Throughput 2.28k tok/s
Semanticization Threshold < 0.9% Corpus (~737M tokens)
Best-Eval Perplexity 58 @ Step 120k · 55 @ 130k (live)
Open Weights Milestone December 1, 2026

Katana 1.1B Specification

Dense 36-layer decoder-only transformer combining pre-norm SwiGLU foundations with content-conditional positional modulation.

Parameter Specification

Hyperparameter Value Role
Total Parameters 1,122,571,848 1.12B total capacity
Backbone Params 1,021,910,088 Non-embedding dense capacity
Depth & Width 36 Layers · d_model 1536 24 heads (head dim 64)
MLP Block SwiGLU (ff = 4,096) No bias, gated expansion
Context & RoPE 4,096 tokens · θ = 1,000,000 NTK-scaled frequency
Vocabulary 65,535 (uint16 tied) Custom Byte-Level BPE
MLPs (60.5%)
Attention (30.2%)
Embeddings (9.0%)
Modulation (0.3%)

Inductive Biases

01

Content-Conditional Position

Modulates positional fields dynamically via sequence hidden states for input-sensitive attention routing.

02

Learned Dynamic Gating

Learned block-level density profiles softly gate attention residuals on outlier or novel tokens.

03

Embedding Self-Gating

Dimension-wise input gating before token embeddings enter the 36-layer dense stack.

GPU Optimization Stack

Katana 1.1B pretrains entirely from scratch within a single consumer 12GB GPU with the complete optimizer state resident. The mechanisms that make this possible are proprietary and intentionally not detailed here.

Avalanche Optimizer

Released

Our breakthrough matrix-factorized AdamW variant cuts optimizer VRAM by up to 99.99%. Now with unified multi-precision: Lossless 4-Bit, 8-Bit, FP16, BF16, and FP32. Authored by Jassim Ibrahim Farooqi.

● ~10 MB Resident (Factorized)
● Lossless 4-Bit / 8-Bit / BF16
Explore & Download →

Activation Memory Management

Custom variable-density gradient and activation scheduling locks peak VRAM to ~9.1 GB inside the 12GB envelope with zero host-RAM offloading.

● ~9.1 GB Peak / 12 GB Envelope
● Zero Offload Bottlenecks

Sustained Throughput

Katana processes 32,768 tokens per step in ~14.37s per step, sustaining ~2,280 tokens/sec continuously on a single consumer RTX 3060 GPU.

● 32,768 tk/step @ ~14.37s
● ~2,280 tok/s Measured

84.42B-Token Curated Corpus

Structured for coding, math, and agentic workflows. Over 52% of the dataset consists of code repositories and mathematical proofs.

Dataset Composition

FineWebEdu (Educational)
36.19 B (42.9%)
Code (Source Repositories)
33.94 B (40.2%)
FineMath (Reasoning & Proofs)
10.03 B (11.9%)
FineWeb (General Web)
4.17 B (4.9%)
Math_SFT & Reasoning
0.084 B (0.1%)
Total Tokens84,416,266,881
Structured Share52.1% (Code + Math)
Encoding Formatuint16 (157 GB flat array)
Tokenizer65,535 Byte-Level BPE
Build Throughput16.6M tok/s (84.9 min)

Milestones & Model Ladder

Katana 1.1B open-weights base release on December 1, 2026. Continuous pretraining and finetuned (Coder-Instruct) weights will follow sequentially.

Katana 1.1B 1.12B Params

Foundational dense transformer for coding and agentic workflows. 36 layers with content-conditional position modulation.

Release: December 1, 2026
Channel: Hugging Face (Base Weights)
Follow-up: Continuous Pretraining & Coder-Instruct
Katana-VLM VLM Core

Vision-Language multimodal adaptation combining Katana's syntactic core with visual token encoders.

Target: Multimodal Code & UI Reasoning
Status: Architecture Specification Complete
Dagger Future Architecture

Next-gen edge architecture for sub-10ms agentic decision loops and local function execution.

Target: Low-Latency Agentic Loops
Reaper Future Architecture

Deep reasoning architecture for mathematical verification, theorem synthesis, and complex AST refactoring.

Target: Deep Scientific Reasoning
Titan Future Architecture

Flagship sovereign open-weights model family. Scaled across dedicated cluster compute.

Target: Sovereign Frontier Foundation Model
Excalibur Future Architecture

Long-horizon multi-agent synthesis system with real-time recursive self-verification.

Target: Autonomous Frontier Agentic Core

Execution Milestones

Bespoke Single-GPU Trainer & Factored Optimizer Completed

Trained 1.12B parameters from scratch with full optimizer state resident on a single 12GB GPU at 2.28k tok/s.

Curated 84.42B-Token Corpus & uint16 Pipeline Completed

157 GB token array with 52% code/math composition built at 16.6M tok/s.

Empirical Early Semanticization Research Report Updated · Step 120k

Field report documenting semanticization through ~2.4B tokens: DOM ASTs, Unity il2cpp & reflection dialects, code-gate mapping, and temperature→genre phase maps. Read Report →

GGUF Export Pipeline (f16 & Q8_0 @ Step 130k) Done

Clean local inference surface — katana-130k-Q8_0.gguf serving the on-box test harness with a clean GGUF export for iRun Studio / llama.cpp.

Katana 1.1B Open-Weights Base Release — December 1, 2026 Release on December 1, 2026

Public release on Hugging Face (OpenBlade/Katana-1.1b-base) and GGUF format. Base model trained through ~22.45B tokens (exactly 20 tokens/param, Chinchilla-optimal regime).

Continuous Pretraining & Katana Coder-Instruct Finetunes Post-Dec 1

Sequential releases of advanced checkpoints and specialized coding/instruction-tuned weights.

Katana 1.1B vs Standard 1.1B Model

Comparing the pretraining loss trajectory and early syntactic acquisition of Katana 1.1B against an industry-average 1.1B dense transformer.

Pretraining Loss Trajectory (0 to 2,500M Tokens)

Hover over Katana milestone points to inspect semantic acquisition states. Points ≤ 70.5k: logged moving-average; later points: 32-block held-out eval snapshots.

Katana 1.1B (OpenBlade)
Standard 1.1B Transformer
7.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 Loss 0M 500M 1,000M 1,500M 2,000M 2,500M Tokens Step 10k: Token Syntax Step 32k: Sentence Grammar Step 58k: Semantic Routing Step 70.5k: Bootstrap 5 DOM AST ★ Step 98k: il2cpp Step 109k: Code Hold Step 120k ★
Inspected Milestone
2.36B Tokens (Step 120k)
Katana Convergence Metric
Best-eval Loss 4.06 · PPL 58.1
Efficiency Advantage
-0.24 Loss Advantage vs Baseline

Early Semantic Generalization

At under 0.9% of corpus (~737M tokens) Katana 1.1B learned syntax, code idioms, and domain vocabulary well before factual memorization — and by step 120k (~2.4B tokens) it was sustaining niche registered dialects: il2cpp decompiler text, Mono.Cecil reflection APIs, isomorphic DOM ASTs, and theology prose. Below, the on-device field log.

Checkpoint Telemetry Inspector

FIELD LOG DATA
Tokens Seen
7.00 B
CE Loss
2.97
Perplexity (PPL)
19.6
Top-1 Accuracy
45.0%
Corpus: 8.29% · Metric: New Best Held-Out Eval @ 414,000 (PPL 19.58, loss 2.974 · batch loss 2.645 · acc1 51.0%) · Checkpoints: vortex_v4-best.pt @ step 414k
Prompt: "Binary search is" / "Newton's third law states that" — live eval probe @ step 414,000 LOG TRACE
The next in the third part of a binary search algorithm, and one way to store the numbers from left and right (0) will be equal to 1 2 3…
Reading: Sub-20 PPL breakthrough! Held-out eval perplexity drops to 19.58 (loss 2.974), with batch training loss hitting 2.645 and Top-1 accuracy crossing 51.0% (Acc@5: 69.2%). Deep algorithmic semanticization (left/right pointers, laws enumeration) emerges.

Unity Meta-Generics Dialect Hold (Step 120k)

T=0.85 · LIVE GGUF SAMPLE

At Step 120k the code dialect fires at a lowered sweet-temperature (~0.85) and holds real Unity type names — Type_t4DA9…, NullCheck, VirtualFuncInvoke, System.Array`2<UnityEngine.UIElements…> — persisting past the collapse window that ended earlier checkpoints' runs.

.RuntimeArray_t*)String_0;
    _t* L_30 = V_0;
    L_39 = Type_t4DA9F9F55A0C4A0B7A8D41C8A565F1;
    NullCheck(L_8);
    // System.Array`2<UnityEngine.UIElements.StylePropertyAnimationSystem…>
    // … the il2cpp decompiler register, live at Step 120k.

Generative Qualitative Probe Matrix

iRun Studio — Native Mac App

A high-performance macOS app on the Mac App Store. Built exclusively for Apple Silicon with custom Metal acceleration for zero-latency private execution.

✓

Pure Metal Hardware Acceleration

Optimized for M-series unified memory, sustaining blazing on-device inference.

✓

GGUF, Safetensors & Diffusion

Seamlessly loads Katana 1.1B GGUF weights, image diffusion, and vision models.

✓

100% Private Offline Intelligence

Zero telemetry. Run local code assistants and agents completely offline.

Mac App Store (www.irun.studio) →
iRun Studio · Apple Silicon Metal

Katana 1.1B (Q4_K_M)

OpenBlade Dense Foundation Model

● METAL ACTIVE
Target Device Apple Silicon M-Series GPU
VRAM Allocation 0.74 GB (Unified)
Throughput 114.2 tok/sec
● Compute Grants & Hardware Partnerships

Foundry Compute & GPU Clusters

OpenBlade is an independent ML research foundry in the EU. Hardware partnerships and academic compute grants directly accelerate open foundation models for science.

01. GPU Cluster Scaling

Compute partnerships unlock multi-node cluster scaling, moving Katana from single-GPU validation to frontier convergence.

02. Model Hierarchy

Accelerates parallel training across Katana-VLM, Dagger, Reaper, and the sovereign Titan model.

03. 100% Open Weights

All checkpoints, alignment finetunes, and research evaluations are released openly on Hugging Face.

Compute & Grants Inquiries View on Hugging Face

Hugging Face Access

Katana 1.1B base checkpoint (unlocking December 1, 2026):

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

repo_id = "OpenBlade/Katana-1.1b-base"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(repo_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(repo_id, torch_dtype="auto")

inputs = tokenizer("<html><body>", return_tensors="pt")
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=100, temperature=0.9)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]))

Cite OpenBlade Research

Academic BibTeX citation for Katana 1.1B technical report:

@techreport{farooqi2026katana,
  title       = {Katana 1.1B: Early Semanticization and Discrete Optimization in Open-Weight Transformers},
  author      = {Jassim Ibrahim Farooqi},
  year        = {2026},
  institution = {OpenBlade EU Foundry},
  url         = {https://www.openblade.org/report},
  note        = {Ongoing research}
}