PrismML, an AI lab co-founded by Caltech mathematician Babak Hassibi, has open-sourced its 1-bit Bonsai series of large language models. The flagship model, 1-bit Bonsai 8B, boasts 8.2 billion parameters and occupies just 1.15 GB of memory, making it 14 times more compressed than comparable 16-bit models. This model, along with smaller versions, demonstrates comparable performance to 16-bit models on standard benchmarks, despite its reduced memory footprint. The 1-bit Bonsai 8B model achieves impressive real-world speeds, with the iPhone 17 Pro Max processing approximately 44 tokens per second. PrismML's innovation reduces energy consumption by 4 to 5 times compared to 16-bit models, with potential for further efficiency gains if future hardware supports 1-bit inference. The development was supported by a $16.25 million funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Cerberus Capital, and Caltech, with Vinod Khosla highlighting the model as a major technological breakthrough.