MxBai Embed Large
Mixedbread's open-weights embedding model. State-of-the-art quality at 335M parameters.
Best for high-quality English embeddings
Sizes 335M
Context 512
License Apache 2.0
Min VRAM (default size, Q4) CPU
Rec VRAM 1 GB
What is MxBai Embed Large?
MxBai Embed Large is Mixedbread AI's open-weights language model. Released in 2024-04, it ships in 1 size (335M) and is licensed Apache 2.0. The most popular use case is high-quality English embeddings.
VRAM and hardware
The 335M size fits in CPU of VRAM.
| Size | Min VRAM (Q4_K_M) | Recommended VRAM | Tokens/sec on 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 335M | CPU | CPU | ~40 tok/s |
How to run MxBai Embed Large locally
Option 1: Ollama (simplest)
ollama pull mxbai-embed-large
ollama run mxbai-embed-large Option 2: Mullama (production)
mullama pull mxbai-embed-large
mullama run mxbai-embed-large Option 3: llama.cpp (CLI)
# Download a GGUF from Hugging Face (search "mxbai-embed-large gguf")
./llama-cli -m mxbai-embed-large.Q4_K_M.gguf -p "Hello, AI!" Option 4: Python with Mullama or llama-cpp-python
from mullama import Model, Context
model = Model.load("mxbai-embed-large.Q4_K_M.gguf", n_gpu_layers=99)
ctx = Context(model, n_ctx=4096)
print(ctx.generate("Hello, AI!", 256)) What you can build with MxBai Embed Large
- RAG
- retrieval
- semantic search
Hardware it fits on
- Apple Silicon (8GB): 335M in MLX
- Apple Silicon (16GB): 335M in MLX
- Apple Silicon (32GB): 335M in MLX or GGUF
- Apple Silicon (64GB+): 335M in MLX
- RTX 3090 (24GB): 335M at Q4_K_M
- RTX 4090 (24GB): same as 3090, ~30% faster
- RTX 5090 (32GB): 335M at Q8_0
- 2× RTX 6000 Ada (96GB total): 335M at Q4_K_M
Related models in the MxBai family
This is the only MxBai-family model in the catalog right now.
Other models you might consider
- Llama 3.1 (Meta) — 8B, general-purpose chat, agentic workflows, code
- Llama 3.2 (Meta) — 1B, low-end hardware, mobile, edge deployment
- Llama 3.2 Vision (Meta) — 11B, vision + chat on desktop GPUs
- Llama 3.3 (Meta) — 70B, best-in-class 70B for desktops
- Llama 4 (Meta) — Scout 17B (109B MoE), vision + long context (10M tokens)
- Qwen 2.5 (Alibaba) — 0.5B, strongest 7B-32B on consumer hardware