Kyutai, a non-profit laboratory dedicated to open research in artificial intelligence (AI), was founded jointly by the iliad Group, the CMA CGM Group, and Schmidt Futures. Each of these organizations has contributed $110 million to fund the lab, which is committed to developing large multimodal models and inventing new algorithms to enhance their capacities, reliability, and efficiency.

Kyutai’s objective is to tackle the main challenges of modern AI and bring together the world’s best experts to address them. The lab has already assembled a team of researchers with academic and business backgrounds.

Rodolphe Saadé, President and CEO of the CMA CGM Group, said that he wanted “the younger generation to benefit from all the opportunities that this technology has to offer.” He noted that Kyutai will provide researchers with all the resources they need to create and invent the world of tomorrow.

Xavier Niel, Chairman and Founder of the iliad Group commented that “Europe’s got everything it takes to win the AI race.” He highlighted French researchers as being among the best in the world and emphasized that France has all the computing power needed for AI research. By creating an open research lab in Paris, he believes Kyutai will give Europe an edge in developing ultra high-performing, reliable AI models.

Patrick Pérez, CEO of Kyutai added that “To achieve our ambitions, we’re building an exceptional research team and are immersing ourselves in major challenges of modern AI.” He stated that they were looking forward to sharing with the community their first results from their open research.