AI Glossary
Foundation model
What is Foundation model?
A large AI model trained on vast amounts of data that can be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks through fine-tuning or prompting. GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and Llama are all foundation models. The term was coined by Stanford researchers in 2021.
Example in practice
An enterprise deploying AI for customer support, internal search, and document generation would typically build all three products on a single foundation model — adapting it via prompting or fine-tuning for each use case.
Learn more
See Foundation model applied in a professional context through this free course.
AI Fundamentals for Professionals →