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VERIFIED JULY 2026
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MODEL · OPENBMB · ~9B (BUILT ON QWEN3-8B + VISION/AUDIO ENCODERS)

MiniCPM-o 4.5

OpenBMB's current omnimodal flagship, superseding MiniCPM-o 2.6 — vision, speech-in, speech-out in one ~9B model now built on the Qwen3-8B backbone. Adds full-duplex live streaming (input and output don't block each other) and proactive interaction, and OpenBMB reports it matching Gemini 2.5 Flash on vision/speech. Apache 2.0.

License: Apache 2.0 · Context: Inherits Qwen3-8B base · Released: February 3, 2026

The decision in five lines

The call
Skip for local — for voice
Best for
voice
Runs on
23 hardware picks fit (cheapest: Intel Arc B580 12 GB · $249)
Watch out
Pure TTS or pure STT — the full multimodal stack is overkill.
Evidence
Estimated · last verified July 2026

~9B (built on Qwen3-8B + vision
PARAMETERS
MULTIMODAL OMNI
TYPE
Inherits
CONTEXT
~9–10 GB (int4) / ~18 GB (FP16)
VRAM AT Q4

Where we recommend this

Every tier slot in the planner where this model is a top or alternate pick. Pulled live from planner.js — when the planner refreshes, this table stays current.

VOICE · LOW
MiniCPM-o 4.5 (int4)Apache 2.0; ~9B omnimodal on a Qwen3-8B backbone at ~9–10GB VRAM (int4); full-duplex live streaming voice + vision on laptop GPUs. Supersedes the 2.6 generation.

The call

OpenBMB's current omnimodal flagship, superseding MiniCPM-o 2.6 — vision, speech-in, speech-out in one ~9B model now built on the Qwen3-8B backbone. Adds full-duplex live streaming (input and output don't block each other) and proactive interaction, and OpenBMB reports it matching Gemini 2.5 Flash on vision/speech. Apache 2.0.

When not to use: Pure TTS or pure STT — the full multimodal stack is overkill. Use Kokoro or faster-whisper for single-purpose pipelines. Vision-only work: the lighter `MiniCPM-V-4.6` (1B) may be enough.

Runner notes

llama.cpp for CPU, vLLM for throughput. int4 fits ~9–10 GB VRAM. Built on Qwen3-8B (the 2.6 generation used Qwen2.5-7B). Sibling `MiniCPM-V-4.6` (April 2026, vision-only, 1B) is the lighter option when you don't need voice I/O. Prior `MiniCPM-o-2_6` (Jan 2025) still on HF if you need the older stack.

License
Apache 2.0
Released
February 3, 2026
Maker
OpenBMB

Hardware that fits

Every hardware pick whose memory fits this model at the quant we recommend. Sorted cheapest-first — the top row is your best-value fit. Click through for the full buyer’s guide.

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