# Hugging Face releases Carbon-X, a 14B model that combines DNA and natural language

> Original title: Today we're releasing Carbon-X, a 14B model that brings DNA and natural language together for the first time 🧬

- Source: Lewis Tunstall
- Published: 2026-10-22T10:21:03.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/s28pt3vs1mkwkx59y9cmfltcp
- Original: https://x.com/_lewtun/status/2113214040516268126

## Summary

Hugging Face releases Carbon-X, a 14B model trained on 300B tokens of interleaved DNA and text, followed by SFT and RL. The author says it beats every open language model tested on DNA benchmarks and comes within a point of GPT-6.1 Sol at over 1,000x lower inference cost. The model is Apache 2.0 licensed and runs locally on a laptop with llama.cpp.

## Post

Today we're releasing Carbon-X, a 14B model that brings DNA and natural language together for the first time 🧬

1. Beats every open language model we tested across DNA benchmarks. Within a point of GPT-6.1 Sol at >1,000× lower inference cost.

2. Mid-trained on 300B tokens of interleaved DNA and text, followed by SFT (without distillation!) and RL.

3. A new hybrid tokenizer encodes DNA using ~3× fewer tokens than BPE.

4. Gives other models a DNA specialist subagent: Kimi K3 gains 11.1 points when it consults Carbon-X.

5. Runs locally on a laptop with llama.cpp. Apache 2.0. Your DNA stays on your hardware.

Model: https://huggingface.co/HuggingFaceBio/Carbon-X
Blog: https://huggingface.co/spaces/HuggingFaceBio/Carbon-X-Release

[Video](https://badinfluence.news/api/img-proxy?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Famplify_video_thumb%2F2113213326687703040%2Fimg%2Few_WEia8llfHh2BL.jpg&mode=thumb&exp=1793404800&sig=265c70279cc40c76)

## Quoted post @LoubnaBenAllal1

> Introducing Carbon-X: The best open DNA model.
> 
> We midtrained a 14B model on DNA and text, and it beats every open language model and matches GPT-6.1 Sol at 1,000x lower cost.
> 
> Ask it about a sequence, what a mutation does, or to generate new DNA.
> 
> https://huggingface.co/HuggingFaceBio/Carbon-X

https://x.com/LoubnaBenAllal1/status/2113212025560023513