BigScience
11 models across 2 families · Latest: MT0 XXL (2024-01)
Pioneering open-source AI collaboration
BigScience's portfolio covers 11 active models across 1 current family, spanning general LLM work. Open a model detail page to compare provider routes and sourced benchmarks.
Covers 0 workload areas across 11 active tracked models; last verified 2026-05-19.
Use it for
- Teams evaluating general LLM work across this lab's releases
- Comparing model families before committing to a flagship
- Migration and pricing follow-ups across 11 tracked models
Do not use it for
- Choosing a hosting provider without opening a model page for price ladders
Active models
11
Current models from this lab, excluding deprecated ones
Active families
1
Current model families from this lab
Open catalog
11 open
5 open source / 6 open weights
Lowest output price
$1.80 /1M
Cheapest tracked output across active models, per 1M tokens
Latest dated release
2024-01-01
MT0 XXL
Freshness
2026-05-19
Researched 60d ago
Information
Release cadence
Showing 5 recent dated releases (full timeline below). Latest: MT0 XXL (2024-01-01).
Where this lab wins
Not enough capability or benchmark coverage yet to call strengths for this lab.
Flagship quality / price signal
Flagship: BLOOMZ 176B (best sourced coding quality-per-dollar in this portfolio).
Quality-per-dollar unavailable for this flagship — benchmark coverage or output token pricing is still missing.
BigScience is an AI research lab founded in 2021. Pioneering open-source AI collaboration. BigScience ships 2 model families totaling 11 models, with the most recent release MT0 XXL in 2024-01. Notable families include MT0 and BLOOMZ. Use it as a stable reference for lab background, release coverage, and follow-up model pages as they are added. Researchers and evaluators can scan counts, links. View official API endpoints, benchmark performance, and coding/agent fit for every BigScience model.
About
BigScience is a pioneering collaborative research initiative that has significantly advanced the field of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. Unlike many projects dominated by corporate secrecy, BigScience stands out for its commitment to open science, inclusivity, and ethical considerations. This initiative originated from discussions facilitated by Hugging Face, GENCI, and IDRIS, aiming to produce open-source LLMs and datasets that not only serve academic and practical use but also explore the broader societal impacts of AI. This philosophy marks a stark contrast to the closed-source practices often seen in the tech industry. At its core, BigScience aims to democratize access to powerful AI tools by fostering a more inclusive research environment. The project's dedication to openness is embodied in its multilingual LLM and dataset, both available to researchers globally without charge. This initiative brought together over 1,000 researchers from 60 countries and more than 250 institutions, highlighting an interdisciplinary collaboration rare in the industry. This diversity of expertise, spanning fields such as computer science and social sciences, ensures comprehensive consideration of the ethical and social implications of LLMs. The methodology behind BigScience involves establishing specialized working groups to tackle different facets of LLM development, from sourcing data to designing the model architecture. A key focus has been on data diversity, actively including data from underrepresented texts to combat existing biases. The culmination of these efforts is ROOTS, a massive multilingual dataset that was instrumental in training BLOOM, a 176-billion-parameter LLM capable of producing text in a wide range of natural and programming languages. The release of BLOOM represents a significant milestone for the open-source AI community, providing unprecedented access to a powerful open LLM for global researchers and developers. Ethical considerations are central to BigScience's mission, evident from its establishment of an ethical charter that outlines values such as inclusivity, diversity, and responsibility. The development of a Responsible AI License (RAIL) further underscores its commitment to ethically responsible AI use. By incorporating ethical practices from the outset, BigScience differentiates itself from other AI initiatives that treat responsibility as an afterthought. The initiative has also contributed extensively to the AI research community through publications that share methodologies, findings, and gathered insights, providing valuable lessons on conducting responsible and inclusive AI research.
Featured models
Model families
Recent releases
FAQ
Who founded BigScience and when?
BigScience was founded in 2021 and is associated with N/A. concluded 2022.
What models has BigScience released?
BigScience ships 11 models across 2 families: MT0 and BLOOMZ.
Is BigScience's technology open source?
All tracked BigScience models are open-weight or open-source.
Where is BigScience headquartered?
BigScience is headquartered in N/A.
What is BigScience known for?
Pioneering open-source AI collaboration. Its most prominent tracked family is MT0.
How can I access BigScience's models?
BigScience's models are available via IBM watsonx.
Explore related pages
Last reviewed: 2026-05-19. Data sourced from public lab announcements and provider documentation.