Introducing Online KL Shampoo (OKLS), an optimizer that brings a KL-optimal approximation of full-matrix AdaGrad to language-model training.
Diagonal optimizers ignore correlations between gradient coordinates. Full-matrix AdaGrad captures this geometry but requires quadratic state. Muon considers correlations but not their history. OKLS closes this gap using KL-optimal Kronecker factors, whitening matrix gradients across both row and column directions while remaining naturally scale-invariant.
The main challenge is computing fresh inverse-square-root preconditioners at every step. Even one-step staleness can destabilize training. We make zero-staleness preconditioning practical with Scaled CANS Coupled Newton–Schulz: 10 iterations, 27 FP16 GEMMs, and FP32 accumulation.
OKLS achieves 1.45× the parameter efficiency of Muon while retaining 98% of its training throughput. Across 200M–1B models, an OKLS model matches a Muon model roughly 1.5× larger.