diff --git a/flexgen/flex_opt.py b/flexgen/flex_opt.py
index 24f87a90..389b5f5e 100644
--- a/flexgen/flex_opt.py
+++ b/flexgen/flex_opt.py
@@ -584,7 +584,9 @@ def __init__(self,
                  config: Union[str, OptConfig],
                  env: ExecutionEnv,
                  path: str,
-                 policy: Policy):
+                 policy: Policy,
+                 local: bool = False,
+                 local_path: str = None):
         if isinstance(config, str):
             config = get_opt_config(config)
         self.config = config
@@ -592,6 +594,8 @@ def __init__(self,
         self.path = path
         self.policy = policy
         self.num_gpu_batches = policy.num_gpu_batches
+        self.local = local
+        self.local_path = local_path
 
         layers = []
         layers.append(InputEmbed(self.config, self.env, self.policy))
@@ -646,7 +650,7 @@ def init_weight(self, j):
             os.path.join(self.path, f"{self.config.name}-np")))
         check_path = os.path.join(expanded_path, "decoder.embed_positions.weight")
         if not os.path.exists(check_path) and DUMMY_WEIGHT not in check_path:
-            download_opt_weights(self.config.name, self.path)
+            download_opt_weights(self.config.name, self.path, self.local, self.local_path)
 
         self.layers[j].init_weight(self.weight_home[j], expanded_path)
 
@@ -1216,7 +1220,7 @@ def run_flexgen(args):
           f"hidden size (prefill): {hidden_size/GB:.3f} GB")
 
     print("init weight...")
-    model = OptLM(opt_config, env, args.path, policy)
+    model = OptLM(opt_config, env, args.path, policy, args.local, args.model)
 
     try:
         print("warmup - generate")
@@ -1316,6 +1320,9 @@ def add_parser_arguments(parser):
     parser.add_argument("--overlap", type=str2bool, nargs='?',
         const=True, default=True)
 
+    parser.add_argument("--local", action="store_true",
+        help="Whether to use local copy of the model weights. ")
+
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
diff --git a/flexgen/opt_config.py b/flexgen/opt_config.py
index 57f2a159..b303b6f4 100644
--- a/flexgen/opt_config.py
+++ b/flexgen/opt_config.py
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ def hidden_bytes(self, batch_size, seq_len):
 
 def get_opt_config(name, **kwargs):
     if "/" in name:
-        name = name.split("/")[1]
+        name = name.split("/")[-1]
     name = name.lower()
 
     # Handle opt-iml-30b and opt-iml-max-30b
@@ -216,21 +216,27 @@ def disable_hf_opt_init():
             "_init_weights", lambda *args, **kwargs: None)
 
 
-def download_opt_weights(model_name, path):
+def download_opt_weights(model_name, path, local = False, local_path = None):
     from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download
     import torch
 
-    print(f"Load the pre-trained pytorch weights of {model_name} from huggingface. "
-          f"The downloading and cpu loading can take dozens of minutes. "
-          f"If it seems to get stuck, you can monitor the progress by "
-          f"checking the memory usage of this process.")
+    if not local:
+        print(f"Load the pre-trained pytorch weights of {model_name} from huggingface. "
+            f"The downloading and cpu loading can take dozens of minutes. "
+            f"If it seems to get stuck, you can monitor the progress by "
+            f"checking the memory usage of this process.")
 
-    if "opt" in model_name:
-        hf_model_name = "facebook/" + model_name
-    elif "galactica" in model_name:
-        hf_model_name = "facebook/" + model_name
+        if "opt" in model_name:
+            hf_model_name = "facebook/" + model_name
+        elif "galactica" in model_name:
+            hf_model_name = "facebook/" + model_name
+
+        folder = snapshot_download(hf_model_name, allow_patterns="*.bin")
+    else:
+        print(f"Load the pre-trained pytorch weights of {model_name} from local path: "
+            f"{local_path}. The loading can take dozens of minutes.")
+        folder = local_path
 
-    folder = snapshot_download(hf_model_name, allow_patterns="*.bin")
     bin_files = glob.glob(os.path.join(folder, "*.bin"))
 
     if "/" in model_name: