A global AI research lab at MBZUAI developing open foundation models (K2, JAIS, PAN). Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, with hubs in Silicon Valley and Paris.
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.
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