A new player has stepped into the global AI ring. The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in the UAE has unveiled K2 Think, a low-cost reasoning model designed to compete with giants like OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek.
A smaller model with big ambitions
According to a report by CNBC, unlike DeepSeek’s 671-billion-parameter R1 model, K2 Think is comparatively modest at 32 billion parameters. Yet MBZUAI claims it performs on par with the flagship models of its U.S. and Chinese counterparts. Built on Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 open-source model and tested on hardware from AI chipmaker Cerebras, K2 Think shows that size isn’t everything.
The model was developed in partnership with G42, the UAE-based AI firm backed by Microsoft. Researchers say it scores competitively across key benchmarks — including AIME24, AIME25, HMMT25, OMNI-Math-HARD, LiveCodeBenchv5 for coding, and GPQA-Diamond for science reasoning.
The methods behind K2 Think
Hector Liu, who heads MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models, explained that the team combined several techniques to reach these results. These include chain-of-thought supervised fine-tuning for step-by-step reasoning. It also includes test-time scaling, which boosts performance by applying extra compute during inferencing.
Crucially, Liu said the model is treated as an evolving “system” rather than a static release. “We actually deploy the model and see how we can improve it over time,” he told CNBC.
Why it matters
Until now, the AI race has largely been dominated by the U.S. and China. DeepSeek’s R1 earlier this year put Beijing firmly on the map as a serious AI contender to OpenAI. Now, the UAE is positioning itself as a third force in the race — part of a broader strategy to diversify its economy and boost geopolitical clout beyond oil, according to the report.
With G42 as its flagship, Abu Dhabi is betting heavily on AI. But competition looms close to home: neighbouring Saudi Arabia is building its own full-stack AI capabilities through Humain, a new venture under the Public Investment Fund, as per the report.
Geopolitical hurdles remain. Microsoft’s investment in G42 last year sparked scrutiny in Washington, given the company’s past links to China. And despite K2 Think’s breakthrough, the UAE’s ecosystem is still dwarfed by Silicon Valley and Beijing.
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