Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research arm of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), has announced the launch of Falcon-H1 Arabic, a new family of high-performance large language models (LLMs) specifically designed for the Arabic language. The new models leverage a novel hybrid Mamba-Transformer architecture to deliver state-of-the-art performance, outperforming significantly larger global models from tech giants like Meta and Alibaba Cloud.
A New Architecture for Superior Performance
Representing a significant evolution from previous Falcon versions, the Falcon-H1 Arabic family is built on a hybrid architecture that combines the strengths of Mamba and Transformer models. This innovative approach enhances efficiency and processing power, allowing the models to achieve top-tier results with smaller parameter counts. The family is available in three sizes: 3 billion, 7 billion, and 34 billion parameters, making advanced AI more accessible to organizations with limited computational resources.
This efficient design also enables the models to process up to 256,000 tokens of context, allowing for in-depth analysis of lengthy documents such as legal contracts, medical records, and academic research while maintaining full contextual understanding.
Outperforming Industry Heavyweights
According to TII’s evaluations on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard (OALL), the Falcon-H1 Arabic models have set new benchmarks for Arabic language AI. The 34B model achieved a score of 75.36%, surpassing even 70B+ parameter systems including Meta’s Llama-3.3 70B and Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen2.5 72B.
The smaller models also demonstrated exceptional capabilities. The Falcon-H1 Arabic 10B model scored 71.47%, outperforming regional competitors like Qatar’s Fanar-1-9B and Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN ALLaM 7B. The compact 3B model registered a score of 61.87%, placing it 10 points ahead of leading competitors in its class, such as Microsoft’s Phi-4 Mini.
Tailored for the Arabic-Speaking World
The Falcon-H1 Arabic family directly addresses the scarcity of high-performance AI systems optimized for the linguistic and cultural nuances of the Arabic-speaking world. The models were trained on high-quality data with extensive dialect coverage to ensure deep linguistic and cultural understanding.
This is demonstrated by strong results on specialized benchmarks, including 3LM for STEM reasoning, ArabCulture for cultural understanding, and AraDice for dialect comprehension. These capabilities are poised to unlock powerful new applications across critical sectors in the region, including education, healthcare, governance, and enterprise solutions.
Building on the Falcon Legacy
The launch is part of a broader push by TII to establish itself as a global leader in efficient, open-source AI. The Falcon model series, first released in 2023, has already been downloaded over 55 million times. This new release follows the recent launch of Falcon H1R 7B, a compact model focused on advanced reasoning that achieved 88.1% accuracy on the AIME-24 mathematics benchmark, outclassing larger systems from Microsoft and NVIDIA.
Together, these advancements underscore Abu Dhabi’s rapidly growing AI research capabilities and its commitment to contributing frontier models to the global open-source community, solidifying its position as a key hub for AI development outside of traditional tech centers.
About Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is a leading global scientific research center and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). TII works at the intersection of discovery science and applied research to develop breakthrough solutions for some of humanity’s greatest challenges, solidifying Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s status as a global hub for innovation.
Source: Middle East AI News
