Falcon is a series of new language models created by the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) located in Abu Dhabi, which are released under the Apache 2.0 license, yes, that super-rich Middle Eastern country - Abu Dhabi. Notably, Falcon-40B is the first "truly open" model, whose capabilities are comparable to many of the current closed-source models. This is good news for practitioners, enthusiasts, and the industry, as "true open source" allows everyone to explore a plethora of applications based on them without any reservations.