CorX Labs

AI Research Lab · Jamaica, Caribbean

Architecting the future, from the ground up.

CorX Labs is an independent AI research lab in the Caribbean. We design and train open-source language models from zero — architecture, tokenizer, training pipeline and all.

CorX1.5 · 158M parameters Apache 2.0 licensed Trained from scratch on a single GPU

Announcement

CorX Labs releases CorX1.5, an open-source language model built from scratch in Jamaica.

CorX Labs, an independent artificial intelligence research lab and research station based in Jamaica, today announced the open-source release of CorX1.5 — a 158-million-parameter language model designed and trained entirely from scratch by a single developer on a single GPU.

CorX1.5 is not a fine-tune of an existing base model. Its architecture, its 32,768-token tokenizer, its pretraining pipeline and its fine-tuning were all written in house and trained from random weights. The model is a custom decoder-only transformer using RoPE positional encoding, SwiGLU feed-forward layers and RMSNorm, with 10 layers and a 1,024-token context window, and it introduces learned role embeddings — a signal that marks every token as user, assistant or raw text at the architecture level, rather than leaving the model to infer it from special tokens.

Training ran in three stages: pretraining on approximately 3 billion tokens drawn from 25 open datasets spanning code, mathematics, reasoning, conversation and general text; distillation from a larger teacher model with automated quality filtering; and reasoning training, in which the model learns to show its working inside <think> blocks before answering. A held-out validation split with early stopping was used throughout.

The lab is publishing the model with an explicit statement of its limits. CorX1.5 is a small model trained on billions of tokens where comparable models from major labs are trained on trillions, and CorX Labs states plainly that it is not suitable for broad factual recall, complex multi-step mathematics, or production and safety-critical use. The model also ships with a hardcoded crisis-response layer, implemented in code rather than left to the model's judgment.

“For years I've shared a dream to build something great — my own AI. Today that dream came through, and I can say I made it from scratch, from the ground up.”

Nathan, founder of CorX Labs

Availability. CorX1.5 is available now under the Apache 2.0 licence on Hugging Face at huggingface.co/Sigmandndnns/CorX1.5-160M, including weights, tokenizer and the model definition required to load it. Training is ongoing, with updated checkpoints released as new data is added.

About CorX Labs. CorX Labs is an independent AI research lab and research station in Jamaica, in the Caribbean. It designs, trains and open-sources language models built from the ground up. Media and business inquiries: lkk89002@gmail.com.

What this is

An AI lab and research station in the Caribbean.

CorX Labs is an independent artificial intelligence research lab based in Jamaica. It builds language models from scratch — writing the architecture, training the tokenizer, running the pretraining and fine-tuning — rather than adapting somebody else's base model. Its first public release is CorX1.5, a 158M-parameter decoder-only transformer trained from random weights on a single GPU and released open-source under Apache 2.0.

This website is the lab's home: the documentation explains what CorX Labs and CorX1.5 are and how the model was built, and our products lists every model we release.

Parameters
158M
Pretraining tokens
~3B
Open datasets
25
Developers
1

Our products

Models we have made.

Everything CorX Labs releases is open-source, documented, and published on Hugging Face for anyone to download and run.

Released Text generation Apache 2.0

CorX1.5

A ~158M parameter decoder-only transformer, built entirely from scratch by a single developer — no fine-tune of an existing base model. Trained in three stages: pretraining, distillation, then reasoning training.

Parameters
157.8M
Layers
10
Context
1,024 tokens
Vocabulary
32,768 BPE

How we work

From the ground up.

Built, not borrowed

Architecture, tokenizer, data pipeline and training loop are written here. Our models start from random weights, not from someone else's checkpoint.

Honest about limits

Every model ships with a plain statement of what it is good at and what it is not. Small models are small; we document that instead of overselling it.

Open by default

Weights, tokenizer and model definitions are published under Apache 2.0 so anyone can download them, read them, and learn how the whole thing fits together.

Training pipeline

How a CorX model is made.

  1. Pretraining

    ~3 billion tokens across 25 open datasets spanning code, math, reasoning, conversation and general web text, with a held-out validation split and early stopping to catch overfitting.

  2. Distillation

    Fine-tuned on responses generated by a larger teacher model, with automated quality filtering that keeps only well-formatted, non-repetitive, correctly-verified answers.

  3. Reasoning training

    Trained to show step-by-step work inside <think> blocks before answering, including verified worked arithmetic and debugging exercises with a known, injected bug to check against.

  4. Ongoing additions

    New topics and targeted fixes are added continuously as gaps turn up in testing. Checkpoints are updated over time rather than frozen at a single release.

Read the full training write-up

Questions

Frequently asked.

What is CorX1.5?

CorX1.5 is an open-source language model with roughly 158 million parameters, built from scratch by CorX Labs in Jamaica. It is a custom decoder-only transformer using RoPE positional encoding, SwiGLU feed-forward layers and RMSNorm, with 10 layers, a 1,024-token context window and a 32,768-token custom BPE vocabulary. It is not a fine-tune of an existing base model.

What is CorX Labs?

CorX Labs is an independent AI research lab and research station based in Jamaica, in the Caribbean. It designs, trains and open-sources language models built from the ground up rather than adapting existing models.

Is there an open-source AI model made in Jamaica?

Yes. CorX1.5 is an open-source language model designed and trained in Jamaica by CorX Labs, and released under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face at huggingface.co/Sigmandndnns/CorX1.5-160M.

Where can I download or try CorX1.5?

CorX1.5 is published on Hugging Face at huggingface.co/Sigmandndnns/CorX1.5-160M. Weights, tokenizer and the model definition file are available there under the Apache 2.0 license. See the CorX1.5 model page for loading instructions.

Who built CorX1.5?

CorX1.5 was built by Nathan, a solo developer and independent AI researcher from Jamaica and the founder of CorX Labs. The architecture, tokenizer, pretraining pipeline and fine-tuning were all written and trained by one person on a single GPU. Read the full story on the about page.

Get in touch

Working on something? So are we.

For business inquiries, research collaboration, or questions about running a CorX model, write to us directly.