Late Crystallization in LLMs: How Facts Emerge in the Final Layers

85.9% of correct answers never appear in any intermediate layer prediction. We discovered that factual knowledge in LLMs undergoes a sudden phase transition—crystallizing only at the final layer. This phenomenon explains why some interventions work and others don’t.

Date: June 6, 2026  |  Estimated Reading Time: 15 min  |  Author: Xueping Gao