Abu Dhabi enters low-cost AI model competition with K2 Think launch

The AI race continues to heat up as a new competitor K2 Think emerges from the Gulf and based in Abu Dhabi, exerting pressure on some prominent American and Chinese models.

The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) announced the new model, adding that they will be challenging models such as ChatGPT. K2 Think is reportedly smaller and cheaper to run than the offerings of industry leaders such as OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek, yet its backers insist it matches them on performance benchmarks.

How K2 Think works

MBZUAI’s researchers built K2 Think on Alibaba’s open-source Qwen 2.5 architecture, with hardware supplied by specialist chipmaker Cerebras. At just 32 billion parameters, it is dwarfed by DeepSeek’s R1, which runs to 671 billion. OpenAI’s models remain secretive on their exact scale.

The institute says K2 Think is no ordinary release. “What was special about our model is we treat it more like a system than just a model,” explained Hector Liu, director of MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models.

AIME24, HMMT25, OMNI-Math-HARD have been benchmarks cited by the team. Coding tests such as LiveCodeBenchv5, and scientific reasoning assessments like GPQA-Diamond have shown results that are on par with established systems like OpenAI and DeepSeek, despite its leaner design.

Until now, the AI race has been dominated by two poles: the US, led by Silicon Valley start-ups and tech giants, and China, which has designated AI a strategic national priority. DeepSeek’s R1, released earlier this year, shook assumptions that only US firms could dominate cutting-edge reasoning models.

With Microsoft backing the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42, the UAE is pivoting on the new technology to be its next “oil,” which has fueled its economy to great heights. This is a collective government position, and G42 is already proving to be a regional giant.

Experts say this could accelerate productivity in the region

However, the UAE faces competition from neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has been funneling investment into its own AI ventures, including Humain. It is a start-up launched by the Public Investment Fund with ambitions to build a full-stack AI industry.

For the UAE, developing cheaper, efficient models could widen access to advanced AI in regions without the infrastructure or cash reserves of American tech groups.

“What we’re discovering is that you can do a lot more with less,” said Richard Morton, managing director of MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models.

Morton is of the opinion that K2 Think could be a game changer in areas like mathematics, life sciences, and engineering.

K2 Think has also been released as open source, following the example of DeepSeek, which is also intensifying competition with US models as it works on new model designed to do advanced agent tasks, according to a previous Cryptopolitan report. MBZUAI said this move would allow “every step of how the model learns to reason” to be scrutinized, replicated and improved upon by researchers worldwide.

That transparency could help bolster the UAE’s credibility, though it will not insulate it from geopolitics. Microsoft’s partnership with G42 attracted scrutiny in Washington over potential links with China. Such concerns highlight the delicate balance the Emirates must strike as it tries to assert itself in a field shaped by U.S.–China rivalry.

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