China-based research lab DeepSeek<\/a> said it had been closely catching up to the achievements of the United States\u2019s OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, using a fraction of its budget and energy.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe UAE\u2019s model, called K2 Think, is smaller in terms of parameters, or\u00a0<\/p>\n
the configuration variables of a machine learning model which control how it processes data and makes predictions, compared to its AI competitors, including DeepSeek. However, the researchers behind it say its performance is on par with OpenAI and DeepSeek\u2019s reasoning models.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The university said in a press release that its K2 Think is \u201ca new class of reasoning model,\u201d adding that \u201cit employs long chain-of-thought supervised fine-tuning to strengthen logical depth, followed by reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards to sharpen accuracy on hard problems\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was special about our model is we treat it more like a system than just a model,\u201d Hector Liu, director of MBZUAI\u2019s institute of foundation models, told CNBC in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, unlike a regular open source model where we can just release the model, we actually deploy the model and see how we can improve the model over time\u201d.<\/p>\n
MBZUAI also said that it is \u201cone of the fastest and most efficient reasoning systems in existence\u201d. It says K2 Think can achieve 2,000 tokens per second, which is roughly 1,500 words.\u00a0<\/p>\n
K2 Think was built on Alibaba\u2019s Qwen 2.5 large language model and is run on hardware from AI chipmaker Cerebras.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like DeepSeek\u2019s R1 model, K2 Think is also open source, meaning its training data and weights are available to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new level of transparency ensures that every step of how the model learns to reason can be studied, reproduced, and extended by the global research community,\u201d the university said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The global AI race<\/p>\n
The technology could have major implications for the global AI race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though the US, followed by China, reigns supreme, other countries are trying to make their mark in AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cK2 Think is a defining moment for AI in the UAE,\u201d MBZUAI said. \u201cIt reflects how open innovation and close public\u2013private partnerships can position Abu Dhabi as a global leader in AI, demonstrating that the future of reasoning will be shaped not only by size, but by ingenuity and collaboration\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 10\/09\/2025 – 7:00 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT A new, cheaper artificial intelligence (AI) model has entered the technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,7708,111,139,69,13478,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-13676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-deepseek","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-open-ai","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-stacked-outlined-72x72-grey-9.svg\"){kind=logo}