CERN and Mistral sign a statement of intent to advance AI for science and strengthen Europe’s scientific and technological capabilities
CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and Mistral, a European developer of large-scale AI models, have signed a statement of intent to establish a long-term strategic partnership focused on developing foundation models for scientific discovery.
The partnership brings together CERN’s expertise in fundamental physics, scientific data and large-scale computing with Mistral’s leadership in large-scale model training, leveraging these combined capabilities and resources to advance AI for science on an exceptional scale. While the initial focus is on high-energy physics, the partnership has the potential to contribute to the development of AI approaches that can serve the broader scientific community.
At the heart of this work is the ambition to develop a single pretrained Large Physics Model – the first foundation model for collider physics. It will be trained on billions of simulated proton-proton collisions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, and designed to support multiple tasks, from reconstructing particle collisions and identifying particles to flagging unexpected signals and evaluating future detector designs.
The model is intended to address a fundamental challenge in analysing LHC collisions. Today, reconstruction relies on a chain of specialised algorithms that progressively transform detector signals into the particles and other objects used for physics analysis. Machine learning has long played an important role in this process, improving performance across a range of specialised tasks. Foundation models offer the potential to build on these advances, learning across the whole reconstruction chain and supporting multiple tasks within a single model.
“High-energy physics provides a unique environment in which artificial intelligence can be developed and tested with exceptional rigour. We are partnering with Mistral, a leading European AI company, to advance AI capabilities that can serve the whole physics community and be shared,” said Enrica Porcari, CERN’s Chief Information Officer.
CERN is home to one of the world’s largest volumes of scientific data, with around one exabyte – one million terabytes – of experimental data from the LHC stored to date. The number of collisions is set to increase tenfold with the HL-LHC, which is expected to begin operation around 2030. This combination of scale and scientific precision provides exceptional conditions for developing and testing AI.
“We are proud to work with CERN to explore what large-scale AI models can bring to the growing complexity of particle physics. Together, we have the opportunity to push the frontiers of high-energy physics, developing AI capabilities that have the potential to lead to new scientific discoveries,”said Johannes Brandstetter, Vice-President of AI for Engineering at Mistral.
By bringing together European excellence in AI and fundamental science, this partnership marks a step towards a new generation of AI tools capable of addressing the scale, precision and complexity of modern science in Europe and beyond.
About Mistral:
Mistral is a global AI lab building state-of-the-art open-weight models, products and infrastructure that enable enterprises, public institutions and advanced industries to own, customise and control their AI. Headquartered in France, Mistral has a strong international presence across Europe, North America and Asia.
For more information, visit www.mistral.ai.
