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.

22 hrs ago • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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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.

22 hrs ago • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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From DeepSeek V3 to V3.2: Architecture, Sparse Attention, and RL Updates

Understanding How DeepSeek's Flagship Open-Weight Models Evolved

Dec 3 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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November 2025

Beyond Standard LLMs

Linear Attention Hybrids, Text Diffusion, Code World Models, and Small Recursive Transformers

Nov 4 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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October 2025

Understanding the 4 Main Approaches to LLM Evaluation (From Scratch)

Multiple-Choice Benchmarks, Verifiers, Leaderboards, and LLM Judges with Code Examples

Oct 5 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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September 2025

Understanding and Implementing Qwen3 From Scratch

A Detailed Look at One of the Leading Open-Source LLMs

Sep 6 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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August 2025

From GPT-2 to gpt-oss: Analyzing the Architectural Advances

And How They Stack Up Against Qwen3

Aug 9 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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July 2025

The Big LLM Architecture Comparison

From DeepSeek-V3 to Kimi K2: A Look At Modern LLM Architecture Design

Jul 19 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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LLM Research Papers: The 2025 List (January to June)

A topic-organized collection of 200+ LLM research papers from 2025

Jul 1 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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June 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.

Jun 17 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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May 2025

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…

May 10 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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April 2025

The State of Reinforcement Learning for LLM Reasoning

Understanding GRPO and New Insights from Reasoning Model Papers

Apr 19 • Sebastian Raschka, PhD

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