diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index ae6689680..e45037fc0 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git
 transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git
+bitsandbytes @ git+https://github.com/TimDettmers/bitsandbytes.git
 attrdict
 fire
 PyYAML==6.0
 black
-bitsandbytes==0.37.2
 datasets
 accelerate>=0.19.0
 sentencepiece
diff --git a/src/axolotl/utils/models.py b/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
index 934f2f74c..992abf3ed 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
@@ -6,11 +6,12 @@ from typing import Optional, Tuple, TYPE_CHECKING
 
 import torch
 import transformers
+from torch import nn
 from transformers import (
     AutoModelForCausalLM,
     AutoTokenizer,
     PreTrainedModel,
-    AutoConfig,
+    AutoConfig, BitsAndBytesConfig,
 )
 
 try:
@@ -81,6 +82,16 @@ def load_model(
         logging.exception(e)
         raise e
 
+    model_kwargs = {}
+    if cfg.adapter == "qlora":
+        model_kwargs["quantization_config"] = BitsAndBytesConfig(
+            load_in_4bit=True,
+            llm_int8_threshold=6.0,
+            llm_int8_has_fp16_weight=False,
+            bnb_4bit_compute_dtype=torch.float16,
+            bnb_4bit_use_double_quant=True,
+            bnb_4bit_quant_type="nf4",
+        )
     try:
         if cfg.load_4bit and is_llama_derived_model:
             from alpaca_lora_4bit.autograd_4bit import load_llama_model_4bit_low_ram
@@ -125,6 +136,7 @@ def load_model(
                 load_in_8bit=cfg.load_in_8bit and cfg.adapter is not None,
                 torch_dtype=torch_dtype,
                 device_map=cfg.device_map,
+                **model_kwargs,
             )
         # elif model_type == "GPTNeoXForCausalLM" and cfg.flash_attention:
         #     This is a WIP, still an issue with the backward pass
@@ -159,6 +171,7 @@ def load_model(
                 torch_dtype=torch_dtype,
                 device_map=cfg.device_map,
                 trust_remote_code=True if cfg.trust_remote_code is True else False,
+                **model_kwargs,
             )
         else:
             config = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(
@@ -172,6 +185,7 @@ def load_model(
                 torch_dtype=torch_dtype,
                 device_map=cfg.device_map,
                 trust_remote_code=True if cfg.trust_remote_code is True else False,
+                **model_kwargs,
             )
     except Exception as e:
         logging.error(
@@ -184,8 +198,24 @@ def load_model(
             torch_dtype=torch_dtype,
             device_map=cfg.device_map,
             trust_remote_code=True if cfg.trust_remote_code is True else False,
+            **model_kwargs,
         )
 
+    """### Post-processing on the model
+        Finally, we need to apply some post-processing on the 8-bit model to enable training, let's freeze all our layers, and cast the layer-norm in `float32` for stability. We also cast the output of the last layer in `float32` for the same reasons.
+    """
+    if cfg.adapter == "qlora":
+        for param in model.parameters():
+            param.requires_grad = False  # freeze the model - train adapters later
+            if param.ndim == 1:
+                # cast the small parameters (e.g. layernorm) to fp32 for stability
+                param.data = param.data.to(torch.float32)
+        class CastOutputToFloat(nn.Sequential):
+            def forward(self, x):
+                return super().forward(x).to(torch.float32)
+
+        model.lm_head = CastOutputToFloat(model.lm_head)
+
     if not tokenizer:
         try:
             if is_llama_derived_model and "LlamaTokenizer" in globals():
@@ -270,7 +300,7 @@ def load_adapter(model, cfg, adapter):
 
     if adapter is None:
         return model, None
-    if adapter == "lora":
+    if adapter == "lora" or adapter == "qlora":
         return load_lora(model, cfg)
     if adapter == "llama-adapter":
         return load_llama_adapter(model, cfg)