Open by design: Ai2 brings fully open AI infrastructure online with NSF OMAI
Allen Institute (AI2)
Ai2 launched the NSF-funded Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure for Science with NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra systems, providing compute infrastructure for open-source AI research accessible to the broader scientific community. The $152 million investment was awarded last year and the systems are now operational, with Ai2 estimating that 82% of typical training work is exploratory and can be reused across applications when shared openly. The infrastructure enables research outputs including Molmo 2 multimodal models, MolmoPoint with improved spatial reasoning, and Olmo Hybrid language models that other teams can inspect and build upon, creating multiplicative research value compared to closed proprietary systems.
Why it matters
Ai2 is bringing NSF OMAI compute online to power a fully open AI research ecosystem, turning national infrastructure investment into reusable models, data, methods, and tools that can accelerate scientific discovery.
