European physics research centre CERN and Mistral AI have signed a statement of intent to establish a long-term strategic partnership to develop foundation models for scientific discovery, the two organisations said on Thursday (October 15, 2026).
It is meant to replace some specialised algorithms now used to reconstruct and identify particles. No timeline or budget was disclosed.
The partners aim to build a “Large Physics Model”, which CERN said in a statement would be the first foundation model for collider physics, trained on billions of simulated particle collisions. “High-energy physics provides a unique environment in which artificial intelligence can be developed and tested with exceptional rigour,” CERN Chief Information Officer Enrica Porcari said. Both sides said the models could later serve other sciences.
CERN holds about one exabyte, or one million terabytes, of experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider, and expects the volume of collisions to increase tenfold after its ongoing upgrade, expected around 2030.
