Best Foundation Models in the USA
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Compare the Top Foundation Models in the USA as of October 2026
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What are Foundation Models in the USA?
Foundation models are large-scale artificial intelligence models trained on vast and diverse datasets that serve as the underlying technology for a wide range of AI applications. These models learn general-purpose capabilities such as language understanding, reasoning, image recognition, code generation, speech processing, and multimodal comprehension, allowing them to be adapted or fine-tuned for specific tasks across industries. Foundation models power applications including chatbots, AI agents, search, content generation, software development, scientific research, and business automation. Many are available through cloud APIs, open-source distributions, and enterprise AI platforms, supporting custom model development, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and domain-specific optimization. By providing reusable, general-purpose intelligence, foundation models enable organizations to accelerate AI development, reduce implementation costs, and build sophisticated AI-powered applications. Compare and read user reviews of the best Foundation Models in the USA currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
Mistral AI
Mistral AI
Mistral AI is a pioneering artificial intelligence startup specializing in open-source generative AI. The company offers a range of customizable, enterprise-grade AI solutions deployable across various platforms, including on-premises, cloud, edge, and devices. Flagship products include "Le Chat," a multilingual AI assistant designed to enhance productivity in both personal and professional contexts, and "La Plateforme," a developer platform that enables the creation and deployment of AI-powered applications. Committed to transparency and innovation, Mistral AI positions itself as a leading independent AI lab, contributing significantly to open-source AI and policy development.Starting Price: Free -
2
GPT-4o mini
OpenAI
A small model with superior textual intelligence and multimodal reasoning. GPT-4o mini enables a broad range of tasks with its low cost and latency, such as applications that chain or parallelize multiple model calls (e.g., calling multiple APIs), pass a large volume of context to the model (e.g., full code base or conversation history), or interact with customers through fast, real-time text responses (e.g., customer support chatbots). Today, GPT-4o mini supports text and vision in the API, with support for text, image, video and audio inputs and outputs coming in the future. The model has a context window of 128K tokens, supports up to 16K output tokens per request, and has knowledge up to October 2023. Thanks to the improved tokenizer shared with GPT-4o, handling non-English text is now even more cost effective. -
3
Gemini Flash
Google
Gemini Flash is an advanced large language model (LLM) from Google, specifically designed for high-speed, low-latency language processing tasks. Part of Google DeepMind’s Gemini series, Gemini Flash is tailored to provide real-time responses and handle large-scale applications, making it ideal for interactive AI-driven experiences such as customer support, virtual assistants, and live chat solutions. Despite its speed, Gemini Flash doesn’t compromise on quality; it’s built on sophisticated neural architectures that ensure responses remain contextually relevant, coherent, and precise. Google has incorporated rigorous ethical frameworks and responsible AI practices into Gemini Flash, equipping it with guardrails to manage and mitigate biased outputs, ensuring it aligns with Google’s standards for safe and inclusive AI. With Gemini Flash, Google empowers businesses and developers to deploy responsive, intelligent language tools that can meet the demands of fast-paced environments. -
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OpenAI o1-mini
OpenAI
OpenAI o1-mini is a new, cost-effective AI model designed for enhanced reasoning, particularly excelling in STEM fields like mathematics and coding. It's part of the o1 series, which focuses on solving complex problems by spending more time "thinking" through solutions. Despite being smaller and 80% cheaper than its sibling, the o1-preview, o1-mini performs competitively in coding tasks and mathematical reasoning, making it an accessible option for developers and enterprises looking for efficient AI solutions. -
5
Gemini 2.0 Flash
Google
The Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model represents the next generation of high-speed, intelligent computing, designed to set new benchmarks in real-time language processing and decision-making. Building on the robust foundation of its predecessor, it incorporates enhanced neural architecture and breakthrough advancements in optimization, enabling even faster and more accurate responses. Gemini 2.0 Flash is designed for applications requiring instantaneous processing and adaptability, such as live virtual assistants, automated trading systems, and real-time analytics. Its lightweight, efficient design ensures seamless deployment across cloud, edge, and hybrid environments, while its improved contextual understanding and multitasking capabilities make it a versatile tool for tackling complex, dynamic workflows with precision and speed. -
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Gemini Nano
Google
Gemini Nano from Google is a lightweight, energy-efficient AI model designed for high performance in compact, resource-constrained environments. Tailored for edge computing and mobile applications, Gemini Nano combines Google's advanced AI architecture with cutting-edge optimization techniques to deliver seamless performance without compromising speed or accuracy. Despite its compact size, it excels in tasks like voice recognition, natural language processing, real-time translation, and personalized recommendations. With a focus on privacy and efficiency, Gemini Nano processes data locally, minimizing reliance on cloud infrastructure while maintaining robust security. Its adaptability and low power consumption make it an ideal choice for smart devices, IoT ecosystems, and on-the-go AI solutions. -
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Gemini 1.5 Flash
Google
The Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model is an advanced, high-speed language model engineered for lightning-fast processing and real-time responsiveness. Designed to excel in dynamic and time-sensitive applications, it combines streamlined neural architecture with cutting-edge optimization techniques to deliver exceptional performance without compromising on accuracy. Gemini 1.5 Flash is tailored for scenarios requiring rapid data processing, instant decision-making, and seamless multitasking, making it ideal for chatbots, customer support systems, and interactive applications. Its lightweight yet powerful design ensures it can be deployed efficiently across a range of platforms, from cloud-based environments to edge devices, enabling businesses to scale their operations with unmatched agility. -
8
Mistral 7B
Mistral AI
Mistral 7B is a 7.3-billion-parameter language model that outperforms larger models like Llama 2 13B across various benchmarks. It employs Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) for faster inference and Sliding Window Attention (SWA) to efficiently handle longer sequences. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, Mistral 7B is accessible for deployment across diverse platforms, including local environments and major cloud services. Additionally, a fine-tuned version, Mistral 7B Instruct, demonstrates enhanced performance in instruction-following tasks, surpassing models like Llama 2 13B Chat.Starting Price: Free -
9
Mistral NeMo
Mistral AI
Mistral NeMo, our new best small model. A state-of-the-art 12B model with 128k context length, and released under the Apache 2.0 license. Mistral NeMo is a 12B model built in collaboration with NVIDIA. Mistral NeMo offers a large context window of up to 128k tokens. Its reasoning, world knowledge, and coding accuracy are state-of-the-art in its size category. As it relies on standard architecture, Mistral NeMo is easy to use and a drop-in replacement in any system using Mistral 7B. We have released pre-trained base and instruction-tuned checkpoints under the Apache 2.0 license to promote adoption for researchers and enterprises. Mistral NeMo was trained with quantization awareness, enabling FP8 inference without any performance loss. The model is designed for global, multilingual applications. It is trained on function calling and has a large context window. Compared to Mistral 7B, it is much better at following precise instructions, reasoning, and handling multi-turn conversations.Starting Price: Free -
10
Llama 3
Meta
We’ve integrated Llama 3 into Meta AI, our intelligent assistant, that expands the ways people can get things done, create and connect with Meta AI. You can see first-hand the performance of Llama 3 by using Meta AI for coding tasks and problem solving. Whether you're developing agents, or other AI-powered applications, Llama 3 in both 8B and 70B will offer the capabilities and flexibility you need to develop your ideas. With the release of Llama 3, we’ve updated the Responsible Use Guide (RUG) to provide the most comprehensive information on responsible development with LLMs. Our system-centric approach includes updates to our trust and safety tools with Llama Guard 2, optimized to support the newly announced taxonomy published by MLCommons expanding its coverage to a more comprehensive set of safety categories, code shield, and Cybersec Eval 2.Starting Price: Free -
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Llama 3.1
Meta
The open source AI model you can fine-tune, distill and deploy anywhere. Our latest instruction-tuned model is available in 8B, 70B and 405B versions. Using our open ecosystem, build faster with a selection of differentiated product offerings to support your use cases. Choose from real-time inference or batch inference services. Download model weights to further optimize cost per token. Adapt for your application, improve with synthetic data and deploy on-prem or in the cloud. Use Llama system components and extend the model using zero shot tool use and RAG to build agentic behaviors. Leverage 405B high quality data to improve specialized models for specific use cases.Starting Price: Free -
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Llama 3.2
Meta
The open-source AI model you can fine-tune, distill and deploy anywhere is now available in more versions. Choose from 1B, 3B, 11B or 90B, or continue building with Llama 3.1. Llama 3.2 is a collection of large language models (LLMs) pretrained and fine-tuned in 1B and 3B sizes that are multilingual text only, and 11B and 90B sizes that take both text and image inputs and output text. Develop highly performative and efficient applications from our latest release. Use our 1B or 3B models for on device applications such as summarizing a discussion from your phone or calling on-device tools like calendar. Use our 11B or 90B models for image use cases such as transforming an existing image into something new or getting more information from an image of your surroundings.Starting Price: Free -
13
Llama 3.3
Meta
Llama 3.3 is the latest iteration in the Llama series of language models, developed to push the boundaries of AI-powered understanding and communication. With enhanced contextual reasoning, improved language generation, and advanced fine-tuning capabilities, Llama 3.3 is designed to deliver highly accurate, human-like responses across diverse applications. This version features a larger training dataset, refined algorithms for nuanced comprehension, and reduced biases compared to its predecessors. Llama 3.3 excels in tasks such as natural language understanding, creative writing, technical explanation, and multilingual communication, making it an indispensable tool for businesses, developers, and researchers. Its modular architecture allows for customizable deployment in specialized domains, ensuring versatility and performance at scale.Starting Price: Free -
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Llama 4 Scout
Meta
Llama 4 Scout is a powerful 17 billion active parameter multimodal AI model that excels in both text and image processing. With an industry-leading context length of 10 million tokens, it outperforms its predecessors, including Llama 3, in tasks such as multi-document summarization and parsing large codebases. Llama 4 Scout is designed to handle complex reasoning tasks while maintaining high efficiency, making it perfect for use cases requiring long-context comprehension and image grounding. It offers cutting-edge performance in image-related tasks and is particularly well-suited for applications requiring both text and visual understanding.Starting Price: Free -
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GPT-5 mini
OpenAI
GPT-5 mini is a streamlined, faster, and more affordable variant of OpenAI’s GPT-5, optimized for well-defined tasks and precise prompts. It supports text and image inputs and delivers high-quality text outputs with a 400,000-token context window and up to 128,000 output tokens. This model excels at rapid response times, making it suitable for applications requiring fast, accurate language understanding without the full overhead of GPT-5. Pricing is cost-effective, with input tokens at $0.25 per million and output tokens at $2 per million, providing savings over the flagship model. GPT-5 mini supports advanced features like streaming, function calling, structured outputs, and fine-tuning, but does not support audio input or image generation. It integrates well with various API endpoints including chat completions, responses, and embeddings, making it versatile for many AI-powered tasks.Starting Price: $0.25 per 1M tokens -
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GPT-5 nano
OpenAI
GPT-5 nano is OpenAI’s fastest and most affordable version of the GPT-5 family, designed for high-speed text processing tasks like summarization and classification. It supports text and image inputs, generating high-quality text outputs with a large 400,000-token context window and up to 128,000 output tokens. GPT-5 nano offers very fast response times, making it ideal for applications requiring quick turnaround without sacrificing quality. Pricing is extremely competitive, with input tokens costing $0.05 per million and output tokens $0.40 per million, making it accessible for budget-conscious projects. The model supports advanced API features such as streaming, function calling, structured outputs, and fine-tuning. While it supports image input, it does not handle audio input or web search, focusing on core text tasks efficiently.Starting Price: $0.05 per 1M tokens -
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GLM-4.5V-Flash
Z.ai
GLM-4.5V-Flash is an open source vision-language model, designed to bring strong multimodal capabilities into a lightweight, deployable package. It supports image, video, document, and GUI inputs, enabling tasks such as scene understanding, chart and document parsing, screen reading, and multi-image analysis. Compared to larger models in the series, GLM-4.5V-Flash offers a compact footprint while retaining core VLM capabilities like visual reasoning, video understanding, GUI task handling, and complex document parsing. It can serve in “GUI agent” workflows, meaning it can interpret screenshots or desktop captures, recognize icons or UI elements, and assist with automated desktop or web-based tasks. Although it forgoes some of the largest-model performance gains, GLM-4.5V-Flash remains versatile for real-world multimodal tasks where efficiency, lower resource usage, and broad modality support are prioritized.Starting Price: Free -
18
Grok 3 mini
SpaceXAI
Grok-3 Mini, crafted by xAI, is an agile and insightful AI companion tailored for users who need quick, yet thorough answers to their questions. This smaller version maintains the essence of the Grok series, offering an external, often humorous perspective on human affairs with a focus on efficiency. Designed for those on the move or with limited resources, Grok-3 Mini delivers the same level of curiosity and helpfulness in a more compact form. It's adept at handling a broad spectrum of questions, providing succinct insights without compromising on depth or accuracy, making it a perfect tool for fast-paced, modern-day inquiries.Starting Price: Free -
19
Phi-2
Microsoft
We are now releasing Phi-2, a 2.7 billion-parameter language model that demonstrates outstanding reasoning and language understanding capabilities, showcasing state-of-the-art performance among base language models with less than 13 billion parameters. On complex benchmarks Phi-2 matches or outperforms models up to 25x larger, thanks to new innovations in model scaling and training data curation. With its compact size, Phi-2 is an ideal playground for researchers, including for exploration around mechanistic interpretability, safety improvements, or fine-tuning experimentation on a variety of tasks. We have made Phi-2 available in the Azure AI Studio model catalog to foster research and development on language models. -
20
Gemma
Google
Gemma is a family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models built from the same research and technology used to create the Gemini models. Developed by Google DeepMind and other teams across Google, Gemma is inspired by Gemini, and the name reflects the Latin gemma, meaning “precious stone.” Accompanying our model weights, we’re also releasing tools to support developer innovation, foster collaboration, and guide the responsible use of Gemma models. Gemma models share technical and infrastructure components with Gemini, our largest and most capable AI model widely available today. This enables Gemma 2B and 7B to achieve best-in-class performance for their sizes compared to other open models. And Gemma models are capable of running directly on a developer laptop or desktop computer. Notably, Gemma surpasses significantly larger models on key benchmarks while adhering to our rigorous standards for safe and responsible outputs. -
21
Phi-3
Microsoft
A family of powerful, small language models (SLMs) with groundbreaking performance at low cost and low latency. Maximize AI capabilities, lower resource use, and ensure cost-effective generative AI deployments across your applications. Accelerate response times in real-time interactions, autonomous systems, apps requiring low latency, and other critical scenarios. Run Phi-3 in the cloud, at the edge, or on device, resulting in greater deployment and operation flexibility. Phi-3 models were developed in accordance with Microsoft AI principles: accountability, transparency, fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, and inclusiveness. Operate effectively in offline environments where data privacy is paramount or connectivity is limited. Generate more coherent, accurate, and contextually relevant outputs with an expanded context window. Deploy at the edge to deliver faster responses. -
22
LFM-3B
Liquid AI
LFM-3B delivers incredible performance for its size. It positions itself as first place among 3B parameter transformers, hybrids, and RNN models, but also outperforms the previous generation of 7B and 13B models. It is also on par with Phi-3.5-mini on multiple benchmarks, while being 18.4% smaller. LFM-3B is the ideal choice for mobile and other edge text-based applications. -
23
Amazon Nova
Amazon
Amazon Nova is a new generation of state-of-the-art (SOTA) foundation models (FMs) that deliver frontier intelligence and industry leading price-performance, available exclusively on Amazon Bedrock. Amazon Nova Micro, Amazon Nova Lite, and Amazon Nova Pro are understanding models that accept text, image, or video inputs and generate text output. They provide a broad selection of capability, accuracy, speed, and cost operation points. Amazon Nova Micro is a text only model that delivers the lowest latency responses at very low cost. Amazon Nova Lite is a very low-cost multimodal model that is lightning fast for processing image, video, and text inputs. Amazon Nova Pro is a highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide range of tasks. Amazon Nova Pro’s capabilities, coupled with its industry-leading speed and cost efficiency, makes it a compelling model for almost any task, including video summarization, Q&A, math & more. -
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Amazon Nova Micro
Amazon
Amazon Nova Micro is an AI model designed for high-speed, low-cost text processing and generation. It excels in language understanding, translation, code completion, and mathematical problem-solving, providing fast responses with a generation speed of over 200 tokens per second. The model supports fine-tuning for text input and is ideal for applications requiring real-time processing and efficiency. With support for 200+ languages and a maximum of 128k tokens, Nova Micro is perfect for interactive AI applications that prioritize speed and affordability. -
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Amazon Nova Lite
Amazon
Amazon Nova Lite is a cost-efficient, multimodal AI model designed for rapid processing of image, video, and text inputs. It delivers impressive performance at an affordable price, making it ideal for interactive, high-volume applications where cost is a key consideration. With support for fine-tuning across text, image, and video inputs, Nova Lite excels in a variety of tasks that require fast, accurate responses, such as content generation and real-time analytics. -
26
OpenAI o4-mini-high
OpenAI
OpenAI o4-mini-high is an enhanced version of the o4-mini, optimized for higher reasoning capacity and performance. It maintains the same compact size but significantly boosts its ability to handle more complex tasks with improved efficiency. Whether you're dealing with large datasets, advanced mathematical computations, or intricate coding problems, o4-mini-high provides faster, more accurate responses, making it perfect for high-demand applications. -
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Nemotron 3 Nano
NVIDIA
Nemotron 3 Nano is the smallest model in the NVIDIA Nemotron 3 family, built for agentic AI applications with strong reasoning, conversational ability, and cost-efficient inference. It is a hybrid Mamba-Transformer Mixture-of-Experts model with 3.2 billion active parameters, 3.6 billion including embeddings, and 31.6 billion total parameters. NVIDIA describes it as more accurate than the previous Nemotron 2 Nano while activating less than half of the parameters per forward pass, improving efficiency without sacrificing performance. The model is positioned as more accurate than GPT-OSS-20B and Qwen3-30B-A3B-Thinking-2507 on popular benchmarks across different categories. On an 8K input and 16K output setting using a single H200, it delivers inference throughput 3.3 times higher than Qwen3-30B-A3B and 2.2 times higher than GPT-OSS-20B. Nemotron 3 Nano supports context lengths up to 1 million tokens and is reported to outperform GPT-OSS-20B and Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507. -
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OpenAI o3-mini
OpenAI
OpenAI o3-mini is a lightweight version of the advanced o3 AI model, offering powerful reasoning capabilities in a more efficient and accessible package. Designed to break down complex instructions into smaller, manageable steps, o3-mini excels in coding tasks, competitive programming, and problem-solving in mathematics and science. This compact model provides the same high-level precision and logic as its larger counterpart but with reduced computational requirements, making it ideal for use in resource-constrained environments. With built-in deliberative alignment, o3-mini ensures safe, ethical, and context-aware decision-making, making it a versatile tool for developers, researchers, and businesses seeking a balance between performance and efficiency. -
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OpenAI o4-mini
OpenAI
The o4-mini model is a compact and efficient version of the o3 model, released following the launch of GPT-4.1. It offers enhanced reasoning capabilities, with improved performance in tasks that require complex reasoning and problem-solving. The o4-mini is designed to meet the growing demand for advanced AI solutions, serving as a more efficient alternative while maintaining the capabilities of its predecessor. This model is part of OpenAI's strategy to refine and advance their AI technologies ahead of the anticipated GPT-5 launch. -
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Llama
Meta
Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) is a state-of-the-art foundational large language model designed to help researchers advance their work in this subfield of AI. Smaller, more performant models such as Llama enable others in the research community who don’t have access to large amounts of infrastructure to study these models, further democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field. Training smaller foundation models like Llama is desirable in the large language model space because it requires far less computing power and resources to test new approaches, validate others’ work, and explore new use cases. Foundation models train on a large set of unlabeled data, which makes them ideal for fine-tuning for a variety of tasks. We are making Llama available at several sizes (7B, 13B, 33B, and 65B parameters) and also sharing a Llama model card that details how we built the model in keeping with our approach to Responsible AI practices.
