Unlock New LLM Architectural Capabilities By Retraining

Large language models (LLMs) are evolving fast—and retraining offers a powerful path to new architectural capabilities, lower cost, and better performance. Recent research on the Brumby-14B-Base model shows how attention-free retention layers, efficient retraining from pretrained weights, and long-context processing can reshape what’s possible in generative AI. This session dives deep into these techniques and how you can apply them in your own work.

In this code-along, Jacob Buckman, the CEO at Manifest AI, will guide you through cutting-edge methods for LLM design, retraining, and deployment. You’ll explore how alternative attention mechanisms like power retention change model behaviour, how to repurpose pretrained models for new architectures, and how to engineer large-scale training pipelines. Whether you’re building foundation models or pushing boundaries in generative AI research, this session gives you the tools and insights to lead the next wave.