Cactus Compute releases a 16.9MB speech model for local CPUs
Co-founder Henry Ndubuaku helped build Whistle into Cactus Compute's existing Needle runtime, adding keyword biasing and word timestamps for on-device applications.
By RuntimeWire Staff · Published
Primary source: Cactus
Why it matters
Whistle extends Cactus's on-device strategy from local tool-calling models into speech. Its benchmarks are company-reported, and performance still needs to be judged on the hardware and audio that real applications use.
Cactus Compute released Whistle on October 2nd, an open speech-to-text model designed to run locally on a CPU. At 16.9MB, it is built to fit the same Needle runtime that Cactus Compute uses for small on-device language models, extending co-founder Henry Ndubuaku's work on compact inference into speech recognition.…