Institute of Foundation Models

The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) is a global AI research lab operating within the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in the United Arab Emirates. IFM was launched on 23 May 2025 as a multi-site initiative: headquartered in Abu Dhabi (Masdar City) with research hubs in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, California) and Paris. The institute focuses on the open, independent development of frontier-class foundation models published with open weights for global collaboration. Its flagship projects include the K2 model family (e.g. K2-65B, K2 Think, K2 Horizon) developed in the spirit of the LLM360 initiative, the Arabic large language model JAIS, and the PAN world model (with PAN-Agent) for simulation and embodied reasoning. IFM partners with academic institutions, research labs, startups, and enterprises.