Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Carbon-X vs OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

Carbon-X scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT leads on agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Carbon-X C

Best for Agents that need a second opinion on DNA variants and regulatory regions on a 16 to 24 GB machine, without sending sequences to a hosted model.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 50
  • Risk, 65 against 55

Watch for

Not clinically validated and no wet-lab validation reported

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT C

Best for Telecoms teams that want an open model for standards questions and RAG on their own hardware

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 60 against 35

Watch for

BF16 only at 62.6 GB, with no GGUF or other quantised build from anyone we checked

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Carbon-X +40

Carbon-X 90

Memory 30, the publisher's Q4_K_M GGUF is 9.6 GB, or 11.6 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes 20, released llama.cpp (from b11742, which added the DNA tokenizer), vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run it, with no Ollama or LM Studio entry. Builds 15, Hugging Face publishes GGUFs at four precisions. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 on the model and on its Qwen3-14B base. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider or Hugging Face API serves it.

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 50

Memory 10, the publisher's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 62.55 GB for the 15 shards the index names, and 62.55 GB × 1.2 = 75.1 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 15, the architecture is Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration, which vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 run from the safetensors files, three at 5 each. Builds 0, the publisher ships the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence, with nothing added on the card. Download 10, gated is false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account or terms. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps one inference provider, Featherless AI (live), short of the two the line needs. 10 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.

Agent interface OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT +25

Carbon-X 35

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, only the inherited template shows the format and no parser is named. Trained tool calling 0, nothing says it was trained to call tools. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, thinking can be switched off but was never trained, and the card asks you to keep it off. Context 5, 40,960 tokens from the base, though Hugging Face trained at 8,192 and under 16K. Most of what the card documents for agents is Carbon-X as a tool another model calls, which this checklist doesn't read.

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, 19,300 characters, the publisher's own. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one turn, and the card says the training mix included general-purpose agentic tool-calling examples, while none were specific to telecoms. Structured output 0, the card doesn't document JSON or JSON Schema output. Reasoning control 0, the card says the model wasn't trained to produce or consume Gemma's thought channel and answers directly, so there is no thinking to switch or budget. Context 10, 262,144 positions in the text config, the base's native context. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.

Risk Carbon-X +10

Carbon-X 65

File safety 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the documented loading path runs the repository's tokenizer.py through trust_remote_code. Provenance 15, the files are in HuggingFaceBio, which Hugging Face's GitHub repository links, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Hugging Face reports its own dual-use check on sequence editing in the launch post, without numbers or a harness. Agent guidance 5, general cautions only. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 5, Hugging Face's security.txt is a reporting route, and public advisories couldn't be checked.

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 55

File safety 25, safetensors only, with no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python files. Provenance 5, the files sit in a personal account, farbodtavakkoli, not in an organisation AT&T's or GSMA's site links to: GSMA's article names AT&T as the releaser without linking the repository, and the GitHub repository that links it is the same person's (0). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 10, the card says what the trained abstention covers (declining when context is missing, irrelevant or insufficient) and what to add around the model for agent use: an external tool runtime, validated tool schemas, permission controls, audit logging, safeguards and human review. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, field-of-use limit, threshold or change clause, nothing is added on the card, and the licence link resolves (200 on 10 November 2026). Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 25 + 5 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCarbon-XOTel-2.0-LLM-31B-ITEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259050Carbon-X +40
Risk20%206555Carbon-X +10
Agent interface10%103560OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT +25
Documentation and upkeep10%107274OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 56.8/100

Facts side by side

FactCarbon-XOTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorHugging Face (HuggingFaceBio)AT&T (Open Telco AI)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-282026-11-01
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Carbon-X

A DNA specialist cousin that another agent calls for variant-effect and sequence questions, with DNA kept on the machine. Hugging Face's Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 12 GB and Q8_0 about 19 GB, on llama.cpp b11742 or later. It isn't clinically validated, isn't trained for tool calls or reasoning, and its Python tokenizer runs repository code.

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

A real telecoms post-training of Gemma 4 31B IT with an unusually candid card on what was and wasn't trained. It fits a 128 GB machine in BF16 only, with no quantised build, sits in a personal account, and its weights have been replaced in place. Tool-call format, structured output and safety results aren't documented.

Before you call either

Carbon-X

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf HuggingFaceBio/Carbon-X-GGUF:Q8_0 -ngl 99 -c 40960 --jinja --chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": false}' --temp 0.6 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 --min-p 0, on llama.cpp b11742 or later
  2. With vLLM or Transformers pass trust_remote_code, and expect the tokenizer to fetch Qwen/Qwen3-4B-Base at a pinned revision on first load
  3. Keep enable_thinking false and the card's sampling (temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20), the settings every reported result used
  4. Keep DNA in files and pass sequences by name, compute positions and base changes in code and send them as context, the card says the model miscounts long sequences
  5. Only A, C, G and T form 6-mers, so filter N and other IUPAC codes first or they become a single oov token
  6. Strip the dna tags from answers if you need bare sequence, llama.cpp keeps them in the text
  7. Cap max_tokens for next-base questions, long DNA generation is slow and degrades

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

  1. Download the 15 shards the index names, not the whole repository, which is twice the size
  2. Pin a revision. The card says the weights may change under the same name
  3. Serve it with vLLM 0.19.0 or later and the repository's own chat template, not Gemma 4's
  4. Send no thinking flags. It answers directly and wasn't trained on Gemma's thought channel
  5. Use it as the generation stage of a RAG pipeline over telecom standards, with source attribution and human review
  6. Don't use it to run network tools unattended. The card says that hasn't been evaluated

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Carbon-X or OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT?

Carbon-X scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with Carbon-X or OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

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