CERN and Mistral AI team up to build “Flare”, a foundation model for collider physics

European physics laboratory CERN and Paris-based Mistral AI said on Thursday, 15 October 2026, that they have set up a long-term strategic partnership to develop a foundation model for scientific discovery, Reuters reported. The agreement takes the form of a statement of intent.

What “Flare” is meant to be

• The partners aim to build a “Large Physics Model” named Flare, which CERN describes as the first foundation model for collider physics.
• It will be trained on billions of simulated particle collisions — the same basic idea as large language models, but using collision data instead of text, a CERN spokesperson told Reuters.
• It is intended to replace some of the specialised algorithms now used to reconstruct and identify particles. Both sides said such models could later serve other sciences.
• No timeline or budget was disclosed.

What the partners said

CERN Chief Information Officer Enrica Porcari said the partnership would advance AI capabilities that “can serve the whole physics community and be shared”. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, writing in Le Monde, argued that frontier models are “now indispensable to scientific progress”.

The deal gives Mistral access to one of the world’s largest scientific datasets. Reuters also noted that Mistral recently unveiled a new open-weight model due for public release on 27 October.