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CERN and Mistral join forces to accelerate AI for science
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CERN, the European particle physics lab, and the French AI company Mistral have signed a statement of intent. They plan a long-term partnership to build a new AI model for physics.
What happened
CERN and Mistral signed a statement of intent to work together for the long term. Their goal is to build foundation models for scientific discovery. A foundation model is a very large AI model that is trained once and can then be used for many different tasks. The first focus is high-energy physics, the study of the smallest building blocks of matter.
The big idea
The partners plan to build one model called a Large Physics Model. It will be trained on billions of simulated particle crashes, called proton-proton collisions, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is a huge machine at CERN that smashes particles together at very high speed. The model could help rebuild what happens in each collision, find particles, spot unexpected signals, and test designs for future detectors.
Key numbers
- CERN stores about one exabyte of LHC experiment data. That is one million terabytes.
- The number of collisions is set to grow tenfold with the HL-LHC upgrade.
- The HL-LHC is expected to start running around 2030.
Why it matters
Today, many separate computer programs handle each step of analysing LHC data. A single foundation model could learn across all these steps at once. If it works, it could help scientists make new discoveries faster. It could also show how Europe can lead in both AI and basic science.
What to watch
- Whether the partners turn this statement of intent into a full agreement.
- How well the Large Physics Model performs on real LHC tasks.
- Whether the tools are later shared with the wider science community beyond physics.
Glossary
- CERN
- The European Laboratory for Particle Physics. It runs large science machines, including the Large Hadron Collider.
- Mistral
- A European company that builds large AI models and tools for businesses and public groups. It is based in France.
- Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
- A huge machine at CERN that speeds up particles and crashes them together to study physics.
- HL-LHC
- A planned upgrade to the LHC that will create many more collisions. It is expected to start around 2030.