MBZUAI launches K2 Think V2, a fully sovereign reasoning AI model

Abu Dhabi has spent the past few years talking about artificial intelligence as national infrastructure. This week, it took another step toward making that idea concrete.

The Institute of Foundation Models at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, working with G42 and US chipmaker Cerebras Systems, announced the release of K2 Think V2, a 70-billion-parameter AI system designed specifically for complex reasoning.

On paper, this looks like another large language model launch in a crowded global field. In practice, it reflects something more deliberate. The UAE is trying to build a reasoning system it can fully account for, reproduce, and control, rather than one it licenses or adapts from elsewhere.

That distinction matters more than raw benchmark scores.

What MBZUAI is actually claiming

K2 Think V2 is built on a new base model called K2-V2, which MBZUAI describes as its strongest foundation model so far. The key change is structural. Earlier versions of K2 Think were reasoning layers added on top of a general-purpose model. In this version, reasoning is built directly into the foundation itself.

The university says every stage of the system is open. That includes the training data pipeline, data curation, intermediate checkpoints, post-training methods, alignment techniques, and evaluation results. Few large models, even those labelled “open source,” go that far.

The model is designed to handle long contexts and multi-step reasoning in areas like mathematics, science, coding, and logic. MBZUAI reports strong results on reasoning benchmarks such as AIME 2025 and GPQA-Diamond when compared with other open systems.

Those results will need independent verification. But performance is only part of the story here.

Why sovereignty keeps coming up

Most countries today use AI systems that were trained elsewhere, on data they cannot inspect, running on hardware they do not control. That works fine until policies change, access is restricted, or strategic priorities shift.

The UAE’s approach is aimed at reducing that dependency. A reasoning system trained on locally curated data, running on infrastructure selected outside the dominant cloud ecosystems, gives the country more room to decide how and where AI is used.

This is not just about prestige or rankings. Reasoning models increasingly influence real decisions, from education and research to logistics, public services, and industrial planning. When those systems are opaque, accountability becomes difficult. When they are externally controlled, so does long-term planning.

K2 Think V2 is positioned as an attempt to avoid that situation before it becomes entrenched.

Cerebras’ involvement is also telling. Its wafer-scale processors offer a different trade-off from mainstream GPU clusters, prioritising large-scale throughput and simpler model parallelism over flexibility.

For countries navigating supply constraints, export controls, and rising compute costs, alternative hardware paths are no longer a side bet. They are part of a broader effort to keep AI development viable even as global technology flows become more restricted.

The UAE has been unusually open about treating compute as a strategic resource rather than a commodity service.

What this launch does not prove

K2 Think V2 does not suddenly place Abu Dhabi at the top of the global AI hierarchy. Closed models from US labs still operate at larger scales and benefit from proprietary feedback loops and product deployment.

What this release does show is intent. The UAE is investing in the less visible parts of AI development: data governance, training transparency, and reproducibility. Those areas rarely make headlines, but they shape who ultimately controls how AI systems behave.

Whether this approach scales over time is still uncertain. Fully open systems come with their own risks, and transparency alone does not guarantee better outcomes. But the strategy itself is becoming clearer.

Across the world, mid-sized powers are realising that AI dependence looks a lot like energy dependence did in earlier decades. The question is not who has the biggest model today, but who can still build, adapt, and govern these systems ten years from now.

K2 Think V2 fits squarely into that long view. It is less about chasing the frontier and more about ensuring the frontier does not move entirely out of reach.

That may turn out to be the more durable advantage.