Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for implementing long-short term memory cells with saturating gating functions. One of the systems includes a first Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) cell, wherein the first LSTM cell is configured to, for each of the plurality of time steps, generate a new cell state and a new cell output by applying a plurality of gates to a current cell input, a current cell state, and a current cell output, each of the plurality of gates being configured to, for each of the plurality of time steps: receive a gate input vector, generate a respective intermediate gate output vector from the gate input, and apply a respective gating function to each component of the respective intermediate gate output vector, wherein the respective gating function for at least one of the plurality of gates is a saturating gating function.