Sheikh Khaled launches Advanced Technology Research Council's new AI company AI71

In an era of rapid advancements across artificial intelligence (AI), Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) is making yet another bold stride with the launch of its new AI company, AI71.

The entity builds on the Technology Innovation Institute’s (TII) Falcon generative AI models and will focus on multi-domain specialisations while offering unprecedented AI data control options for companies and countries looking to self-host for greater privacy.

The new AI powerhouse was launched by His Highness Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, in the presence of several ministers and representatives of leading multinational technology companies. 

Sheikh Khaled emphasised that investing in artificial intelligence technologies and applications across key sectors will help create new markets with high growth potential and is vital to ensuring long-term sustainable development.

He highlighted that the launch of AI71 is in line with Abu Dhabi’s growth as a hub for innovation and advanced technology and pointed out that the emirate’s efforts to establish robust technological infrastructure and a thriving R&D ecosystem are enabling it to expand knowledge and development in emerging fields such as AI.

He added that the use of artificial intelligence is no longer limited to improving government performance, but is finding significant uptake in research and development across key priority sectors, including healthcare, space sciences, renewable energy, transportation, and traffic control systems.

While ATRC’s Technology Innovation Institute developed the Falcon 7B, 40B, and 180B large language models (LLMs), it will be ATRC’s VentureOne subsidiary that takes AI71 to market across multiple domains, starting with the medical, educational, and legal sectors.

Enabling access to vast storehouses of anonymized data in these verticals - representing a rich and diverse demographic - AI71 will offer a critical differentiator over other serious AI markets today - namely, the UAE’s highly digitized and comparatively mature e-infrastructure.

At a time where innovation often outpaces regulatory frameworks, the UAE government's swift decision-making structure uniquely positions the new company to leverage its responsible AI advancements globally, bypassing the lengthy processes often associated with such developments.

Through partnerships and collaborations, AI71 will enable clients to deploy its AI models and benefit from access to sophisticated data reservoirs to ensure outstanding generative AI performance.

More importantly, AI71 will enable decentralised data ownership, allowing clients to retain control of their own data. This offering will set new standards for privacy and security, serving as a differentiator for AI projects where data sovereignty is critical.

This is a game-changing option for AI accessibility, particularly for enterprises, large corporations, and foreign government entities keen to ensure that their data remains private. 

AI71 will be built on a pro-innovation, whole-of-society approach, and on the premise that AI technology should not remain in the hands of a few but be accessible to more people to foster creative innovation. The new AI company is focused on deepening the credentials of Abu Dhabi and the wider UAE as a serious AI contender, and in doing so, signposting the coming of age of the country’s knowledge economy.

Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council, said, "In the UAE, collaboration is more than a practice - it's embedded in our DNA. Our Falcon generative AI models, at the heart of AI71, empower developers, companies, and countries, and grants them autonomy to steer their own data destiny. With access to the UAE’s centralized datasets, the deliberate commercialization of our AI models across diverse sectors stands as a pivotal element in our AI71 roadmap. While we explore this avenue, we also make a firm commitment to perpetually open sourcing Falcon AI models, because only by democratising these precious data resources do we truly benefit all of society.”

The first of AI71’s cutting-edge specializations will have a medical focus and seek to transform capabilities in diagnosis and decision-making, significantly changing the accuracy and time spent on each patient.

The educational and legal sectors are also to gain value from AI integration and enhancements - impacting each domain with nuanced benefits that lead to new solutions to support societal development.

AI71 is collaborating with seven partners across the ecosystem. These encompass the Department of Government Enablement - Abu Dhabi, which centralizes over 30 government entities through digitization; the Office of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, to support with broader adoption; World Wide Technology to co-develop integrated on-premise AI solutions; CNTXT to provide data labeling and annotation services; Hub71 to attract and scale tech and AI startups; PwC Middle East to address customer use cases; and AWS to supply compute power capacity.

With AI influencing how we live and work for the foreseeable future, the newly established company is looking to grow its offerings for enterprises based on industry demand and facilitate the widespread diffusion of AI across the broader economy. AI71 presents an opportunity to lead a step change and drive an AI-first ecosystem in the UAE and beyond.

As AI71 makes an impact across enterprises, industries, and governments, VentureOne will introduce new specialisations to meet growing demand from various sectors.

WAM