TII’s Falcon H1R 7B can out-reason models up to 7x its size — and it’s (mostly) open

For the last two years, the prevailing logic in generative AI has been one of brute force: if you want better reasoning, you need a bigger model. While "small" models (under 10 billion parameters) have become capable conversationalists, they have historically crumbled when asked to perform multi-step logical deduction or complex mathematical proofs.Today, the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi is challenging that scaling law with the release of Falcon H1R 7B. By abandoning the pure Transformer orthodoxy in favor of a hybrid architecture, TII claims to have built a 7-billion parameter model that not only rivals but outperforms competitors nearly 7X its size — including the 32B and 47B variants of Alibaba's Qwen and Nvidia's Nemotron.The release marks a significant shift in t