K2 Think: the UAE launches its own sovereign reasoning model

In January 2026, the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), together with G42 and Cerebras Systems, announced K2 Think — an advanced reasoning system positioned as part of the UAE's push for technological sovereignty.

What it is

K2 Think is a 70-billion-parameter reasoning model built on the open-source K2 base from IFM. As an openly available foundation model developed and trained in the UAE, it lets local teams run advanced reasoning workloads without depending solely on US or Chinese closed models.