Really proud of our K2 Horizon release!
One message I hope people take from this work is that truly OSS models matter, and “open” does not have to mean weak.
True openness should go far beyond downloadable weights. It should include the training data, code, recipes, and sufficient details for others to understand how a model was built, reproduce it, adapt it, and improve upon it. This level of transparency is essential if we want AI progress to remain scientific, collaborative, and broadly useful.
K2 Horizon is a connected family of six foundation models spanning 0.9B to 375B parameters. Across coding and agentic tasks, it delivers top-tier performance in every size class, with the 0.9B, 3.7B, and 7B models setting new SotA at their respective scales. To me, this is powerful evidence that OSS models can also be frontier models.
My students and I have focused mainly on driving the small-model cohort: 0.9B, 3.7B (~4B), and 7B with
@MaxMa1987's team. Small models are not an afterthought or merely smaller versions of large systems. They are an important research frontier in their own right.
Small models can bring capable intelligence directly to phones, laptops, robots, sensors, and other edge devices. Local deployment can reduce latency and cost, make AI useful with limited connectivity, and, critically, help protect privacy by keeping sensitive user data on the device rather than sending it to the cloud.
A special shoutout to my
@RutgersCS student Junlin Chen (
@Chen94751623484). As a senior undergraduate, Junlin has already spearheaded many essential parts of the research and engineering behind this small-model cohort. That requires technical depth, persistence, sound judgment, and the ability to own difficult problems end-to-end. I’m tremendously proud of what he has accomplished.
Open can be strong. Small can be powerful. And talented young researchers can lead work at the frontier.
Congratulations to the entire team
@IFM_AI. I’m excited to see what the community builds with K2 Horizon.
#K2Horizon #OpenSourceAI #SmallModels #EdgeAI
Introducing K2 Horizon: a connected fleet of six foundation models ranging from 0.9 billion to 375 billion parameters.
- Frontier performance: Across coding and agentic tasks, K2 Horizon delivers top-tier performance in every size class—with the 0.9B, 3.7B and 7B models setting new state of the art at their respective scales.
- Radical openness: K2 Horizon represents the largest fully open-source model launch in AI history. The fully open code, training data and recipes are a significant step forward in transparency.
Launch page:
ifm.ai/k2/
Tech blog:
ifm.ai/blog/k2
Hugging Face:
huggingface.co/collections/I…