Rapid-MLX Launches as Fastest Local AI Engine for Apple Silicon, Beating Ollama by 4.2x

Rapid-MLX launches as the fastest local AI engine for Apple Silicon, running large language models up to 4.2x faster than Ollama with a Time to First Token as low as 0.08 seconds, offering full OpenAI API compatibility and support for tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and models ranging from compact to 158B parameters.

• Rapid-MLX is an open-source local AI engine optimized for Apple Silicon, delivering speeds up to 4.2x faster than Ollama with a cached Time to First Token as low as 0.08 seconds, making it the fastest option for running large language models on Mac hardware.
• The engine supports 100% tool calling across 17 parser formats, features automatic tool call recovery, reasoning separation for chain-of-thought models, DeltaNet state snapshots for hybrid RNN architectures, and smart cloud routing for large-context requests — all through a drop-in OpenAI-compatible API.
• Compatible with popular AI coding tools including Cursor, Claude Code, and Aider, Rapid-MLX supports models ranging from Qwen3.5-4B on 16GB MacBooks to DeepSeek V4 Flash 158B on 256GB Mac Studio Ultra, and integrates seamlessly with frameworks like LangChain, PydanticAI, and smolagents.