Skip to content
AI Foundation Certs

GenAI & Foundation Models

What Foundation Models Are

7 min+60 XPStep 1/10

The shift from custom to foundation

Old ML: you trained a model from scratch for one job — one model, one task.

A foundation model is a huge model pre-trained on a massive, broad dataset — then adapted to many jobs: chat, summarize, translate, code, answer questions. Same base model, different surface.

That adaptability is why the field exploded — you don't build AI anymore, you prompt or fine-tune a foundation model.

insight

Exam distinction worth memorizing: 'foundation model' = the giant pre-trained base. 'LLM' = a foundation model trained on text. 'ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini' = products built on top of LLMs.