The State Of LLMs 2025: Progress, Problems, and Predictions
A 2025 review of large language models, from DeepSeek R1 and RLVR to inference-time scaling, benchmarks, architectures, and predictions for 2026.
LLM Research Papers: The 2025 List (July to December)
In June, I shared a bonus article with my curated and bookmarked research paper lists to the paid subscribers who make this Substack possible.
From DeepSeek V3 to V3.2: Architecture, Sparse Attention, and RL Updates
Understanding How DeepSeek's Flagship Open-Weight Models Evolved
Beyond Standard LLMs
Linear Attention Hybrids, Text Diffusion, Code World Models, and Small Recursive Transformers
Understanding the 4 Main Approaches to LLM Evaluation (From Scratch)
Multiple-Choice Benchmarks, Verifiers, Leaderboards, and LLM Judges with Code Examples
Understanding and Implementing Qwen3 From Scratch
A Detailed Look at One of the Leading Open-Source LLMs
From GPT-2 to gpt-oss: Analyzing the Architectural Advances
And How They Stack Up Against Qwen3
The Big LLM Architecture Comparison
From DeepSeek-V3 to Kimi K2: A Look At Modern LLM Architecture Design
LLM Research Papers: The 2025 List (January to June)
A topic-organized collection of 200+ LLM research papers from 2025
Understanding and Coding the KV Cache in LLMs from Scratch
KV caches are one of the most critical techniques for efficient inference in LLMs in production.
Coding LLMs from the Ground Up: A Complete Course
Why build LLMs from scratch? It's probably the best and most efficient way to learn how LLMs really work. Plus, many readers have told me they had a lot of fun doing it.
The State of Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning
Understanding GRPO and New Insights from Reasoning Model Papers
First Look at Reasoning From Scratch: Chapter 1
Welcome to the next stage of large language models (LLMs): reasoning. LLMs have transformed how we process and generate text, but their success has been largely driven by statistical pattern recognition. However, new advances in reasoning methodologies now enable LLMs to tackle more complex tasks, such as solving logical puzzles or multi-step arithmetic. Understanding these methodologies is the central focus of this book.
The State of LLM Reasoning Model Inference
Inference-Time Compute Scaling Methods to Improve Reasoning Models
Understanding Reasoning LLMs
Methods and Strategies for Building and Refining Reasoning Models
Noteworthy AI Research Papers of 2024 (Part Two)
Six influential AI papers from July to December
Noteworthy AI Research Papers of 2024 (Part One)
Six influential AI papers from January to June
LLM Research Papers: The 2024 List
A curated list of interesting LLM-related research papers from 2024, shared for those looking for something to read over the holidays.
Understanding Multimodal LLMs
An introduction to the main techniques and latest models
Building A GPT-Style LLM Classifier From Scratch
Finetuning a GPT Model for Spam Classification