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: 149M-Parameter Sparse Retriever Tops BEIR-13(12 posts)→
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