# Foundation Model

> A broadly trained model that can be adapted to many downstream tasks.

- Category: Models & Training
- Stage: Established
- Also called: Base model, General-purpose model
- Canonical: https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/foundation-model

## Plain English

A general AI model that other products and specialized systems build on top of.

## Example

A company builds a support assistant on top of a general language model plus its own retrieval system.

## Why it matters

Most AI products are combinations of foundation models, tools, data, prompts, and UX.

## Related

- [LLM](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/large-language-model)
- [Fine-Tuning](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/fine-tuning)
- [Distillation](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/distillation)

## Sources

- [Google Cloud Generative AI Glossary](https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/generative-ai/glossary)
- [Stanford HAI: 2026 AI Index](https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report)