Size
26.6B
4.6B active — only part of the model works on each answer, but all of it has to fit in memory
SOV-Transcribe-1
Context
Not yet confirmed
the longest conversation the model is built to hold
Lab
Salesforce
the lab that released it
Released
Nov 12, 2026
Licence: Apache 2.0 — free for any use, including commercial. Just keep the licence notice.
Worth knowing
An open-weight speech (ASR) model: Salesforce's first speech-augmented language model, released Nov 12, 2026 under Apache 2.0. Whisper large-v3 encoder plus a Gemma 4 26B A4B MoE decoder; non-streaming only, seven languages, audio tested to 30 minutes, instruction-based style steering and keyword context biasing. Artificial Analysis AA-WER 2.28% — #1 open-weight, #7 overall at release, ahead of NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe (2.81%) and Mistral Voxtral Small (2.77%). BF16 checkpoint about 53 GB, so by our method it needs an 80 GB-class GPU or larger (RTX PRO 6000 96 GB, H100 or A100 80GB); it does not fit a 48 GB card at BF16. Serving via a vLLM plugin or Transformers.
What it needs
Full precision (FP16)
53 GB
the weights, uncompressed
8-bit
27 GB
the weights, compressed to 8-bit
4-bit
13 GB
the weights, compressed to 4-bit
How we work this out: memory = the model's total parameters × bytes per weight — 2 bytes at full precision (FP16), 1 byte at 8-bit, half a byte at 4-bit. Weights only — add room for the conversation memory (KV cache) and the serving software. A GPU counts as running a build when its memory covers the weights plus about 20% headroom. Real figures move with context length and software.
GPUs that can run it
Ranked by how well the model runs, then by price.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 95GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
This is the Max-Q version: it runs at lower power and is slower than the full card.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 80GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
An older generation — no FP8, so the newer speed tricks for serving don't apply.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 96GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
No NVLink scale-out; strong all-round, but the Max-Q version (listed separately) runs slower.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 80GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
No NVLink, and lower power than the SXM — slower when cards must work together.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 80GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Pays off only when the card stays busy; on bursty work you pay H100 rent for idle silicon.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 94GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Sold as linked pairs, not as a lone card.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 80GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
One provider's label, published alongside its plainer “H100 PCIe” — check which card you are actually booking.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 141GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
More card than most jobs need; the main trap is paying for it on small work.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 80GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Pays off only when kept busy — avoid it for bursty development work.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 192GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Frontier training money. If your job fits on anything cheaper, a B200 is budget burned for a spec sheet.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 96GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Its processor is ARM, not the usual x86 — some software needs changes to run on it.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 at full precision — its 53GB of weights fit this card's 288GB, with room left for the conversation memory.
Very costly for small jobs — best value only on big work.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 8-bit build needs 27GB, which fits this card's 48GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
An older generation — no FP8, so the newer speed tricks for serving don't apply.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 8-bit build needs 27GB, which fits this card's 48GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
70B at FP16 does not fit, and no flag fixes that. Weak at double-precision maths; no NVLink.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 8-bit build needs 27GB, which fits this card's 48GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
Weak at double-precision maths — not the card for scientific computing. No NVLink.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 8-bit build needs 27GB, which fits this card's 40GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
The 40GB fills up quickly on larger models.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 4-bit build needs 13GB, which fits this card's 24GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
24GB fills up fast on big models. No NVLink, so two cards can't pool memory — and it is a gaming card at heart.
Runs SOV-Transcribe-1 compressed — the 4-bit build needs 13GB, which fits this card's 32GB. The compromise: slightly lower answer quality and a shorter conversation memory than the full-precision build.
No NVLink, so two cards can't pool memory. A consumer card — driver and ECC behaviour matter for production serving.
The cheapest verified way to run it
RTX 4090 at RunPod Community — $0.34/hr — runs it compressed — the 4-bit build.
Launch RunPod Community ↗ See the RTX 4090 →
Checked Nov 15, 2026
Select a GPU See these GPUs on the prices board, ranked for this model.