AI21 Labs
An Israeli lab working on language models and hybrid architectures
Israel Frontier lab Closed
WHAT IT IS
AI21 Labs was founded in Tel Aviv in 2017 and entered with text generation and writing-assistant products. It proposed Jamba, a hybrid architecture combining Transformer layers with a state-space model, aiming to balance long context against inference cost.
Why it matters
With hybrid architectures like Jamba, it showed that looking beyond the pure Transformer for more compute-efficient long-context designs is a viable route.
Key milestones
- 2017
Founded in Tel Aviv
- 2024
Released the hybrid model Jamba