Linkup open-sources SPARSEUP: sub-150M sparse retriever hits 56+ nDCG@10 on BEIR-13, Apache 2.0
antoine_chaffin · x · 2026-09-17
Linkup Research released SPARSEUP, an open-source (Apache 2.0) sparse embedding model filling the sparse slot next to DenseOn and LateOn:
- Under 150M parameters, achieves 56+ nDCG@10 on BEIR-13 — the strongest public vocabulary-based sparse retriever they know of
- Method: start from LateOn-unsupervised, graft ModernBERT's original MLM head, then fine-tune a modified SPLADE-style encoder on LightOn's fine-tuning mixture
- With same backbone and data it lands close to DenseOn; with Seismic it runs sub-millisecond on MS MARCO at >97% recall vs exact search
- Sparse models offer distinct properties like precise lexical matching on rare words; the release shows open contributions enabling further open releases
Related event: Linkup Open-Sources SparseUp, Top Sparse Retriever Under 150M on BEIR-13(10 posts)→
More from Research
- OpenAI reportedly close to solving Hodge Conjecture, another $1M Millennium Prize problem — Distinct-Question-16 · 2026-09-18
- OpenAI reportedly close to solving Hodge Conjecture, another Millennium Prize problem — Distinct-Question-16 · 2026-09-18
- Diffusion-augmented LLM Uno delivers lossless 2.2x speedup over autoregressive generation — HongyiWang10 · 2026-09-18
- Caltech trio on how AI is transforming scientific discovery, from quantum to ecology — AnimaAnandkumar · 2026-09-18
- Porting Agents' Last Exam's Linux CLI subset surfaced benchmark defects, yielding ALE-Gold — dejavucoder · 2026-09-18
- AISTATS 2027 opens submissions with AI review as a first-time feature — qberthet · 2026-09-18