UAE AI institute releases open-source models with code, data

Where Diplomacy Meets News

UAE AI institute releases open-source models with code and data

September 3, 2026

DUBAI,— Abu Dhabi’s Institute of Foundation Models released six new artificial intelligence models on Thursday, along with the data, code and methods used to build them, pushing back against a wider industry trend toward secrecy, the IFM said in a statement.

The release, called K2 Horizon, includes model weights, training data, source code, development methods and checkpoints from along the way, letting outside researchers trace how the models were built and repeat the results, IFM founder Eric Xing told Reuters.

The approach goes further than the open weight method some Chinese companies use, where models can be downloaded but little else is shared.

It also differs from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which keep their models closed, offering no downloads and no details about the data or methods behind them.

Xing said the release was meant to show what a fully open AI model can look like.

He said it was also aimed at showing policymakers, regulators and public interest groups that openness and strong performance are not mutually exclusive.

The launch is part of the United Arab Emirates’ push to become a global hub for artificial intelligence.

The model family ranges from a version built for smartwatches and other small devices to a 375 billion parameter system for enterprise use.

K2 Horizon is downloadable now. The six models were released today under Apache 2.0, and IFM says they are available through Hugging Face, with support for vLLM, SGLang, and Ollama.

(With files from Reuters)