MemOS: A Memory OS for AI System
Authors: name: Zhiyu Li; name: Shichao Song; name: Chenyang Xi; name: Hanyu Wang; name: Chen Tang; name: Simin Niu; name: Ding Chen; name: Jiawei Yang; name: Chunyu Li; name: Qingchen Yu; name: Jihao Zhao; name: Yezhaohui Wang; name: Peng Liu; name: Zehao Lin; name: Pengyuan Wang; name: Jiahao Huo; name: Tianyi Chen; name: Kai Chen; name: Kehang Li; name: Zhen Tao; name: Junpeng Ren; name: Huayi Lai; name: Hao Wu; name: Bo Tang; name: Zhenren Wang; name: Zhaoxin Fan; name: Ningyu Zhang; name: Linfeng Zhang; name: Junchi Yan; name: Mingchuan Yang; name: Tong Xu; name: Wei Xu; name: Huajun Chen; name: Haofeng Wang; name: Hongkang Yang; name: Wentao Zhang; name: Zhi-Qin John Xu; name: Siheng Chen; name: Feiyu Xiong
Published: 2025-07-04 17:21:46

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have become an essential infrastructure for
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), yet their lack of well-defined memory
management systems hinders the development of long-context reasoning, continual
personalization, and knowledge consistency.Existing models mainly rely on
static parameters and short-lived contextual states, limiting their ability to
track user preferences or update knowledge over extended periods.While
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) introduces external knowledge in plain
text, it remains a stateless workaround without lifecycle control or
integration with persistent representations.Recent work has modeled the
training and inference cost of LLMs from a memory hierarchy perspective,
showing that introducing an explicit memory layer between parameter memory and
external retrieval can substantially reduce these costs by externalizing
specific knowledge. Beyond computational efficiency, LLMs face broader
challenges arising from how information is distributed over time and context,
requiring systems capable of managing heterogeneous knowledge spanning
different temporal scales and sources. To address this challenge, we propose
MemOS, a memory operating system that treats memory as a manageable system
resource. It unifies the representation, scheduling, and evolution of
plaintext, activation-based, and parameter-level memories, enabling
cost-efficient storage and retrieval. As the basic unit, a MemCube encapsulates
both memory content and metadata such as provenance and versioning. MemCubes
can be composed, migrated, and fused over time, enabling flexible transitions
between memory types and bridging retrieval with parameter-based learning.
MemOS establishes a memory-centric system framework that brings
controllability, plasticity, and evolvability to LLMs, laying the foundation
for continual learning and personalized modeling.