Foundation Model

Models and Architectures

A huge model trained once on broad data, then adapted for many different uses - the base layer of modern AI products.

A foundation model is trained at enormous cost on broad data - much of the internet, mountains of images or audio - to acquire general capability. Products are then built on top of it through fine-tuning, prompting, and tools, instead of training from scratch.GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama are foundation models. The economics matter: only a handful of organizations can afford to train one, while everyone else builds on top - a dynamic shaping who holds power in the AI industry.