The Dubai AI Festival 2025 is proud to announce Dr. Hakim Hacid, Chief Researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Science Research Center within the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), as one of its distinguished speakers. A global leader in large language models (LLMs) and machine learning systems, Dr. Hacid is at the forefront of the UAE’s ambitious push to build sovereign, open, and scalable AI infrastructure.
His groundbreaking leadership in the development of Falcon LLM and the next-generation Falcon Mamba has firmly placed the UAE on the global map as a creator—not just a consumer—of advanced AI technologies.
Pioneering LLM Research in the UAE
As Chief Researcher at TII’s Artificial Intelligence and Digital Science Research Center, Dr. Hacid leads one of the most important AI research portfolios in the region. His work focuses on building state-of-the-art LLMs, pushing the boundaries of what these systems can achieve in terms of performance, efficiency, and real-world utility.
Under his leadership, the center has produced:
- Falcon LLM: One of the most powerful and transparent open-source LLMs available globally, offering high accuracy and multilingual capabilities for researchers and enterprises.
- Falcon Mamba: A novel evolution in LLM design, incorporating memory-efficient architectures and faster training dynamics—paving the way for next-gen AI use cases across science, education, government, and defense.
These models represent a paradigm shift: AI built in the UAE, for the world, with a strong emphasis on openness, customization, and ethical innovation.
Advancing Open AI, Scientific Rigor, and Innovation Sovereignty
Dr. Hakim Hacid’s work aligns with TII’s broader mission to place the UAE at the forefront of advanced research and technology development. His research agenda champions:
- Open science and transparent AI systems
- Sovereign innovation capabilities for national resilience
- Responsible AI practices, ensuring fairness, alignment, and safety
- Cross-sector applications of AI in language, education, defense, and data intelligence
Through the Falcon project, Dr. Hacid is helping democratize access to high-performance LLMs, while addressing critical global questions around AI scalability, trust, and collaboration.
Keynote at Dubai AI Festival 2025: “Falcon and the Future – Scaling Sovereign AI for the World”
At the Dubai AI Festival 2025, Dr. Hacid will present a keynote titled:
“Falcon and the Future: Building Scalable, Sovereign AI for a Global Age.”
In this session, he will cover:
- The architectural breakthroughs behind Falcon LLM and Falcon Mamba
- The role of open-source models in building trusted AI ecosystems
- Strategies for scalable deployment across languages, industries, and regions
- How nations can foster AI sovereignty while contributing to global progress
Dr. Hacid’s talk will be essential for researchers, developers, policymakers, and enterprise leaders navigating the frontier of AI development and deployment.
Dr. Hakim Hacid’s presence at the Dubai AI Festival 2025 solidifies the UAE’s position as a global leader in AI science—one committed to innovation, transparency, and shaping the digital future on its own terms.
