The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched a new Arabic language artificial intelligence (AI) model, Falcon Arabic, developed by Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC).
The development marks a significant step in the regional race to advance AI technologies within the Gulf.
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It aligns with the UAE’s broader strategy to invest billions of dollars in becoming a global player in the AI sector.
As a major oil exporter, the UAE is leveraging its strong relations with the US to secure access to cutting-edge technology.
During a visit last week, US President Donald Trump noted that an AI agreement with the UAE paves the way for the country to access advanced AI semiconductors from US companies, which represents a substantial achievement for the Gulf nation.
Built on top of Falcon 3-7B (7-billion-parameter), Falcon Arabic is trained on a high-quality native (non-translated) Arabic dataset spanning Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects.
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By GlobalDataThe AI model captures the full linguistic diversity of the Arab world and is claimed to outperform all other regionally available Arabic language models.
The model reportedly matches the performance of competitors that are up to ten times its size.
ATRC secretary general Faisal Al Bannai said: “Today, AI leadership is not about scale for the sake of scale. It is about making powerful tools useful, usable, and universal. Falcon-H1 reflects our commitment to delivering AI that works for everyone – not just the few.”
Apart from Falcon Arabic AI model, ATRC has also launched Falcon H1, which it claims outperforms offerings from competitors like Meta and Alibaba.
This new model reduces the computing power and technical expertise traditionally required to operate advanced AI systems.
Falcon-H1, which continues to support European-origin languages, now has scalable capability to support more than 100 languages, supported by a multilingual tokeniser trained on different datasets.
Earlier in May 2025, Saudi Arabia launched a new company, named Humain, to develop and manage AI technologies in the country.
