# PROFIT: A Specialized Optimizer for Deep Fine Tuning Source: [PROFIT: A Specialized Optimizer for Deep Fine Tuning]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-11-04T05:01:14.806Z Authors: Anirudh S Chakravarthy, Shuai Kyle Zheng, Xin Huang, Sachithra Hemachandra, Xiao Zhang, Yuning Chai, Zhao Chen Published: 2024-12-02T19:37:34.000Z ## Abstract The fine-tuning of pre-trained models has become ubiquitous in generative AI, computer vision, and robotics. Although much attention has been paid to improving the efficiency of fine-tuning model, there has been less scholarship around fine-tuning specifically for improved model performance. To remedy this gap, we present PROFIT, one of the first optimizers designed to incrementally fine-tune converged models on new tasks and/or datasets. Unlike traditional optimizers such as SGD or Adam, which make minimal assumptions due to random initializations, PROFIT takes the properties of a converged model into account explicitly to regularize the optimization process. Employing a temporal gradient-orthogonalization process, PROFIT outperforms fine-tuning methods in various tasks, from image classification to multimodal language model training to large-scale motion prediction. Moreover, PROFIT is encapsulated as a modular optimizer, which makes it easy to integrate directly into any training pipeline with minimal engineering effort. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()