Model reference · open weights
modernbert-embed-large-unsupervised is an open-weight embedding model from lightonai. modernbert-embed-large-unsupervised (FP32) weighs 790 MB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.
For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.
Summary of the lightonai/modernbert-embed-large-unsupervised model card, 2026-10-01
What it is
| Released by | lightonai |
|---|---|
| Released | 2025-01-13 |
| Parameters | 395M |
| VRAM | 790 MB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | Runs | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 12 GB | fits | 11.6 GB |
| RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB | fits | 15.4 GB |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | fits | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | fits | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | fits | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | fits | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | fits | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | fits | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | fits | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | fits | 176 GB |
From the model card
modernbert-embed-unsupervised-large is the unsupervised checkpoint trained with the contrastors library
for 1 epoch over the 235M weakly-supervised contrastive pairs curated in Nomic Embed.
We suggest using moderbert-embed-large for embedding tasks.
| Model | Average (56) | Classification (12) | Clustering (11) | Pair Classification (3) | Reranking (4) | Retrieval (15) | STS (10) | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nomic-embed-text-v1_unsup | 59.9 | 71.2 | 42.5 | 83.7 | 55.0 | 48.0 | 80.8 | 30.7 |
| modernbert-embed-base-unsupervised | 60.03 | 72.11 | 44.34 | 82.78 | 55.0 | 47.05 | 80.33 | 31.2 |
| modernbert-embed-large-unsupervised | 60.71 | 72.90 | 44.96 | 83.44 | 55.54 | 47.90 | 80.95 | 29.86 |
We wanted to thank Zach Nussbaum from Nomic AI for building and sharing the Nomic Embed recipe and tools and its support during the training of this model!
The training has been run on Orange Business Cloud Avenue infrastructure.
If you find the model, dataset, or training code useful, please considering citing ModernBERT as well as Nomic Embed:
@misc{modernbert,
title={Smarter, Better, Faster, Longer: A Modern Bidirectional Encoder for Fast, Memory Efficient, and Long Context Finetuning and Inference},
author={Benjamin Warner and Antoine Chaffin and Benjamin Clavié and Orion Weller and Oskar Hallström and Said Taghadouini and Alexis Gallagher and Raja Biswas and Faisal Ladhak and Tom Aarsen and Nathan Cooper and Griffin Adams and Jeremy Howard and Iacopo Poli},
year={2024},
eprint={2412.13663},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.CL},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.13663},
}
@misc{nussbaum2024nomic,
title={Nomic Embed: Training a Reproducible Long Context Text Embedder},
author={Zach Nussbaum and John X. Morris and Brandon Duderstadt and Andriy Mulyar},
year={2024},
eprint={2402.01613},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.CL}
}
And if you want to cite this fine-tuning in particular, please use:
@misc{ModernBERT-embed-large,
title={ModernBERT-embed-large},
author={Chaffin, Antoine},
url={https://huggingface.co/lightonai/modernbert-embed-large},
year={2025}
}
Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.
Benchmarks
As published on the model card: the maker's own numbers, not measured by AxForge.
| Task | Dataset | Metric | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classification | MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (en) | accuracy | 76.642 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (en) | ap | 39.438 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (en) | f1 | 70.473 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonPolarityClassification | accuracy | 91.830 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonPolarityClassification | ap | 88.836 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonPolarityClassification | f1 | 91.825 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (en) | accuracy | 47.864 |
| Classification | MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (en) | f1 | 47.281 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_1 | 26.885 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_10 | 41.525 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_100 | 42.610 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_1000 | 42.617 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_20 | 42.422 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_3 | 36.143 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | map_at_5 | 39.215 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_1 | 27.169 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_10 | 41.659 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_100 | 42.737 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_1000 | 42.743 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_20 | 42.549 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_3 | 36.202 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | mrr_at_5 | 39.342 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | ndcg_at_1 | 26.885 |
| Retrieval | MTEB ArguAna | ndcg_at_10 | 50.515 |