diff --git a/diffusion/datasets/image_caption.py b/diffusion/datasets/image_caption.py
index 107bec60..37157f8a 100644
--- a/diffusion/datasets/image_caption.py
+++ b/diffusion/datasets/image_caption.py
@@ -32,7 +32,9 @@ class StreamingImageCaptionDataset(StreamingDataset):
             ``StreamingImageCaptionDataset`` uses either ``streams`` or ``remote``/``local``. Default:``None``.
         remote (str, optional): Remote directory (S3 or local filesystem) where dataset is stored. Default: ``None``.
         local (str, optional): Local filesystem directory where dataset is cached during operation. Default: ``None``.
-        tokenizer_name_or_path (str): The name or path of the tokenizer to use. Default: ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``.
+        tokenizer_name_or_path (str): The name or path of the tokenizer to use.
+          ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``, ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'`` or ``'sdxl-e5'``.
+            Default: ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``.
         caption_drop_prob (float): The probability of dropping a caption. Default: ``0.0``.
         microcond_drop_prob (float): The probability of dropping microconditioning. Only relevant for SDXL. Default: ``0.0``.
         caption_selection (str): If there are multiple captions, specifies how to select a single caption.
@@ -42,7 +44,6 @@ class StreamingImageCaptionDataset(StreamingDataset):
         transform (Callable, optional): The transforms to apply to the image. Default: ``None``.
         image_key (str): Key associated with the image in the streaming dataset. Default: ``'image'``.
         caption_key (str): Key associated with the caption in the streaming dataset. Default: ``'caption'``.
-        sdxl (bool): Whether or not we're training SDXL. Default: `False`.
         zero_dropped_captions (bool): If True, zero out text embeddings for dropped captions. Default: ``False``.
 
         **streaming_kwargs: Additional arguments to pass in the construction of the StreamingDataloader
@@ -61,7 +62,6 @@ def __init__(
         transform: Optional[Callable] = None,
         image_key: str = 'image',
         caption_key: str = 'caption',
-        sdxl: bool = False,
         zero_dropped_captions: bool = False,
         **streaming_kwargs,
     ) -> None:
@@ -82,7 +82,6 @@ def __init__(
 
         self.crop = crop
         self.transform = transform
-        self.sdxl = sdxl
         self.caption_drop_prob = caption_drop_prob
         self.microcond_drop_prob = microcond_drop_prob
         self.caption_selection = caption_selection
@@ -90,6 +89,7 @@ def __init__(
         self.caption_key = caption_key
         self.zero_dropped_captions = zero_dropped_captions
 
+        self.sdxl = _is_sdxl(tokenizer_name_or_path)
         if self.sdxl:
             self.tokenizer = SDXLTokenizer(tokenizer_name_or_path)
         else:
@@ -197,7 +197,9 @@ def build_streaming_image_caption_dataloader(
         remote (str, Sequence[str]): One or more remote directories (S3 or local filesystem) where dataset is stored.
         local (str, Sequence[str]): One or more local filesystem directories where dataset is cached during operation.
         batch_size (int): The batch size to use for both the ``StreamingDataset`` and ``DataLoader``.
-        tokenizer_name_or_path (str): The name or path of the tokenizer to use. Default: ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``.
+        tokenizer_name_or_path (str): The name or path of the tokenizer to use.
+          ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``, ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'`` or ``'sdxl-e5'``.
+            Default: ``'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base'``.
         caption_drop_prob (float): The probability of dropping a caption. Default: ``0.0``.
         microcond_drop_prob (float): The probability of dropping microconditioning. Only relevant for SDXL. Default: ``0.0``.
         resize_size (int): The size to resize the image to. Default: ``256``.
@@ -241,9 +243,11 @@ def build_streaming_image_caption_dataloader(
         streams.append(Stream(remote=r, local=l))
 
     # Infer SDXL from tokenizer path
-    sdxl = (tokenizer_name_or_path == 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0')
+    sdxl = _is_sdxl(tokenizer_name_or_path)
     if sdxl:
         log.info('Detected SDXL tokenizer, using SDXL crop transform and tokenizers.')
+        if tokenizer_name_or_path == 'sdxl-e5':
+            log.info('Using E5 text encoder')
 
     # Set the crop to apply
     if crop_type == 'square':
@@ -271,7 +275,6 @@ def build_streaming_image_caption_dataloader(
         image_key=image_key,
         caption_key=caption_key,
         batch_size=batch_size,
-        sdxl=sdxl,
         zero_dropped_captions=zero_dropped_captions,
         **streaming_kwargs,
     )
@@ -284,3 +287,8 @@ def build_streaming_image_caption_dataloader(
     )
 
     return dataloader
+
+
+def _is_sdxl(tokenizer_name_or_path):
+    """Infer SDXL from tokenizer path."""
+    return (tokenizer_name_or_path == 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0' or tokenizer_name_or_path == 'sdxl-e5')
diff --git a/diffusion/models/models.py b/diffusion/models/models.py
index 0bc8d557..4321b8ca 100644
--- a/diffusion/models/models.py
+++ b/diffusion/models/models.py
@@ -13,7 +13,8 @@
 from torchmetrics import MeanSquaredError
 from torchmetrics.image.fid import FrechetInceptionDistance
 from torchmetrics.multimodal.clip_score import CLIPScore
-from transformers import CLIPTextModel, CLIPTextModelWithProjection, CLIPTokenizer, PretrainedConfig
+from transformers import (AutoModel, AutoTokenizer, CLIPTextModel, CLIPTextModelWithProjection, CLIPTokenizer,
+                          PretrainedConfig)
 
 from diffusion.models.autoencoder import (AutoEncoder, AutoEncoderLoss, ComposerAutoEncoder,
                                           ComposerDiffusersAutoEncoder, load_autoencoder)
@@ -222,7 +223,8 @@ def stable_diffusion_xl(
 
     Args:
         model_name (str): Name of the model to load. Determines the text encoders, tokenizers,
-            and noise scheduler. Defaults to 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+            and noise scheduler. 'sdxl-e5' or 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+            Defaults to 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
         unet_model_name (str): Name of the UNet model to load. Defaults to
             'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
         vae_model_name (str): Name of the VAE model to load. Defaults to
@@ -311,6 +313,8 @@ def stable_diffusion_xl(
             # Adapt the unet config to account for differing number of latent channels if necessary
             unet_config['in_channels'] = vae.config['latent_channels']
             unet_config['out_channels'] = vae.config['latent_channels']
+        if model_name == 'sdxl-e5':  # e5 + clip embedding dims + micro conditioning
+            unet_config['cross_attention_dim'] = 2304
         # Init the unet from the config
         unet = UNet2DConditionModel(**unet_config)
 
@@ -325,8 +329,18 @@ def stable_diffusion_xl(
         # Last conv block out projection
         unet.conv_out = zero_module(unet.conv_out)
 
-    # Make the noise schedulers
-    noise_scheduler = DDPMScheduler.from_pretrained(model_name, subfolder='scheduler')
+    torch_dtype = torch.float16 if encode_latents_in_fp16 else None
+    try:
+        vae = AutoencoderKL.from_pretrained(vae_model_name, subfolder='vae', torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
+    except:  # for handling SDXL vae fp16 fixed checkpoint
+        vae = AutoencoderKL.from_pretrained(vae_model_name, torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
+
+    tokenizer = SDXLTokenizer(model_name)
+    text_encoder = SDXLTextEncoder(model_name, encode_latents_in_fp16)
+
+    scheduler_model_name = 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0' if model_name == 'sdxl-e5' else model_name
+    noise_scheduler = DDPMScheduler.from_pretrained(scheduler_model_name, subfolder='scheduler')
+
     inference_noise_scheduler = EulerDiscreteScheduler(num_train_timesteps=1000,
                                                        beta_start=0.00085,
                                                        beta_end=0.012,
@@ -635,14 +649,23 @@ class SDXLTextEncoder(torch.nn.Module):
     Creates two text encoders (a CLIPTextModel and CLIPTextModelWithProjection) that behave like one.
 
     Args:
-        model_name (str): Name of the model's text encoders to load. Defaults to 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+        model_name (str): Name of the model's text encoders to load.
+            'sdxl-e5' or 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+            Default: 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
         encode_latents_in_fp16 (bool): Whether to encode latents in fp16. Defaults to True.
     """
 
     def __init__(self, model_name='stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0', encode_latents_in_fp16=True):
         super().__init__()
+        _validate_model_name(model_name)
         torch_dtype = torch.float16 if encode_latents_in_fp16 else None
-        self.text_encoder = CLIPTextModel.from_pretrained(model_name, subfolder='text_encoder', torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
+        if model_name == 'sdxl-e5':
+            self.text_encoder = AutoModel.from_pretrained('intfloat/e5-large-v2', torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
+            model_name = 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'  # set model name to sdxl to pull other encoder
+        else:
+            self.text_encoder = CLIPTextModel.from_pretrained(model_name,
+                                                              subfolder='text_encoder',
+                                                              torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
         self.text_encoder_2 = CLIPTextModelWithProjection.from_pretrained(model_name,
                                                                           subfolder='text_encoder_2',
                                                                           torch_dtype=torch_dtype)
@@ -669,18 +692,25 @@ class SDXLTokenizer:
     Tokenizes prompt with two tokenizers and returns the joined output.
 
     Args:
-        model_name (str): Name of the model's text encoders to load. Defaults to 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+        model_name (str): Name of the model's tokenizers to load.
+            'sdxl-e5' or 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
+            Default: 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'.
     """
 
     def __init__(self, model_name='stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'):
-        self.tokenizer = CLIPTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name, subfolder='tokenizer')
+        _validate_model_name(model_name)
+        if model_name == 'sdxl-e5':
+            self.tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained('intfloat/e5-large-v2')
+            model_name = 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'
+        else:
+            self.tokenizer = CLIPTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name, subfolder='tokenizer')
         self.tokenizer_2 = CLIPTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name, subfolder='tokenizer_2')
 
     def __call__(self, prompt, padding, truncation, return_tensors, max_length=None):
         tokenized_output = self.tokenizer(
             prompt,
             padding=padding,
-            max_length=self.tokenizer.model_max_length if max_length is None else max_length,
+            max_length=self.tokenizer_2.model_max_length if max_length is None else max_length,
             truncation=truncation,
             return_tensors=return_tensors)
         tokenized_output_2 = self.tokenizer_2(
@@ -691,6 +721,12 @@ def __call__(self, prompt, padding, truncation, return_tensors, max_length=None)
             return_tensors=return_tensors)
 
         # Add second tokenizer output to first tokenizer
-        for key in tokenized_output.keys():
+        for key in tokenized_output_2.keys():
             tokenized_output[key] = [tokenized_output[key], tokenized_output_2[key]]
         return tokenized_output
+
+
+def _validate_model_name(model_name):
+    valid_model_names = {'sdxl-e5', 'stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0'}
+    if model_name not in valid_model_names:
+        raise ValueError(f'model_name must be one of {valid_model_names}.')
diff --git a/diffusion/models/stable_diffusion.py b/diffusion/models/stable_diffusion.py
index de92e3e8..b2fe4fda 100644
--- a/diffusion/models/stable_diffusion.py
+++ b/diffusion/models/stable_diffusion.py
@@ -283,8 +283,6 @@ def eval_forward(self, batch, outputs=None):
         # Skip this if outputs have already been computed, e.g. during training
         if outputs is not None:
             return outputs
-        # Get unet outputs
-        unet_out, targets, timesteps = self.forward(batch)
         # Sample images from the prompts in the batch
         prompts = batch[self.text_key]
         height, width = batch[self.image_key].shape[-2], batch[self.image_key].shape[-1]
@@ -306,6 +304,8 @@ def eval_forward(self, batch, outputs=None):
             # Set to resolution we are trying to generate
             batch['cond_target_size'] = torch.tensor([[width, height]]).repeat(bsz, 1).to(device)
 
+        unet_out, targets, timesteps = self.forward(batch)
+
         generated_images = {}
         for guidance_scale in self.val_guidance_scales:
             gen_images = self.generate(tokenized_prompts=prompts,
diff --git a/tests/test_model.py b/tests/test_model.py
index d2091ac4..1deae55a 100644
--- a/tests/test_model.py
+++ b/tests/test_model.py
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 import pytest
 import torch
 
-from diffusion.models.models import stable_diffusion_2
+from diffusion.models.models import stable_diffusion_2, stable_diffusion_xl
 
 
 def test_model_forward():
@@ -44,3 +44,34 @@ def test_model_generate(guidance_scale, negative_prompt):
         progress_bar=False,
     )
     assert output.shape == (1, 3, 8, 8)
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize('model_name', ['stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0', 'sdxl-e5'])
+def test_model_forward_sdxl(model_name):
+    model = stable_diffusion_xl(model_name=model_name,
+                                pretrained=False,
+                                fsdp=False,
+                                encode_latents_in_fp16=False,
+                                clip_qkv=None)
+    batch_size = 1
+    H = 32
+    W = 32
+    image = torch.randn(batch_size, 3, H, W)
+    latent = torch.randn(batch_size, 4, H // 8, W // 8)
+    caption = torch.randint(low=0, high=128, size=(
+        batch_size,
+        77,
+    ), dtype=torch.long)
+    caption = torch.stack([caption, caption], dim=1)
+    micro_conditioning = torch.randint(1, H, (batch_size, 2))
+
+    batch = {
+        'image': image,
+        'captions': caption,
+        'cond_original_size': micro_conditioning,
+        'cond_crops_coords_top_left': micro_conditioning,
+        'cond_target_size': micro_conditioning
+    }
+    output, target, _ = model(batch)  # model.forward generates the unet output noise or v_pred target.
+    assert output.shape == latent.shape
+    assert target.shape == latent.shape