# Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM

> Source: <https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/06/googles-new-gemma-4-open-ai-model-is-sized-for-your-laptop/>
> Published: 2026-06-03 19:10:03+00:00

The generative AI boom has driven the cost of memory into the stratosphere, and Google is a key part of that trend. So it’s only fitting that Google should offer some less RAM-hungry local AI models. The company has announced the release of a [new Gemma 4 model](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/introducing-gemma-4-12B/) that fills a gap in the lineup that launched earlier this year. The new model is efficient enough that you may be able to run it on a pretty average consumer laptop.

In April, Google [released four models in the Gemma 4 family](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/google-announces-gemma-4-open-ai-models-switches-to-apache-2-0-license/), which also marked the shift to a more open Apache 2.0 license. The initial models included two mobile-optimized options (E2B and E4B) along with a pair of models for more serious work (26B Mixture of Experts and 31B Dense). That left a rather large unserved space in the middle, which is right where the new model falls.

Gemma 4 12B is considerably more capable than the mobile versions, but it won’t require a $20,000 AI accelerator to run locally. Google says Gemma 4 12B is unique in that it can run on many consumer laptops without sacrificing quality. As long as you’ve got a computer with 16GB of system RAM or VRAM, the 12-billion-parameter model will work. That’s about half the total memory footprint of Gemma 4 26B MoE, and Google claims the new model is almost as capable, at least as far as benchmarks go.