Kumo's second-generation relational foundation model (RFM2) can make accurate predictions on any database and any predictive task without any model training.
Jure Leskovec describes Kumo's newly released relational foundation model, which reasons over structured relational data and requires no per-task training to make predictions on a new database. ✦ AI generated
Jure Leskovec · The TWIML AI Podcast · 2026-05-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 27:46
“when I introduced you I mentioned that you were co-founder at Kumo in addition to the research talk about the relationship between the research and what you're doing at Kumo”
we just released um the second version uh is our what we call a relational foundation model. Um, and that's a pre-trained foundation model uh that can reason over structured relational data. Um, and it's crazy what this model can do. So what this model can do, it can make accurate predictions on any database and any predictive task without any model training.
verbatim transcript · starts at 27:46
27:46using this platform to two effects one is to allow um uh partners, customers to train uh tune single task models over the multitabular relational data. Um and I can talk about uh that part. But the recent breakthrough uh that we had and we just released um the second version uh is our what we call a relational foundation model. Um, and that's a pre-trained foundation model uh that can
28:21reason over structured relational data. Um, and it's crazy what this model can do. So what this model can do, it can make accurate predictions on any database and any predictive task without any model training. >> Yeah. And I I find that proposition to be almost outlandish. Like they're just numbers with some unknown relationship and you're going to say that you're going to train a model on just the
28:51relationship between random business numbers and it's going to work in in some unknown use case. How make that make sense to me? >> Thank you. Thank you. I I think it's great. I think as I say this people who listen should should be like what is this guy talking? So So thank you. Right? So I agree, right? Because it's easy to say, "Oh, it's a foundation model. Yukhoo, right? Great." But then,
29:14okay, what does it really do? So here's maybe how to think about this. So the key here is to do in context learning, right? The the same way as a language model does in context learning where I give it a prompt, I give it the information, I give it a task, and then it gives me the answer. So what we do here is the system has several several
29:37components. So there is the database uh and then there needs to be a way for me to instruct the pre-trained foundation model what kind of prediction I want right I want to say predict me the sum of purchase prices over the next one month for this particular customer and that maybe is like how much I'm predicting how much the customer is going to spend or I'm saying predict me
- ·Second-generation relational foundation model (RFM2)
- ·Pre-trained to reason over structured relational data
- ·Accurate predictions on any database, any task
- ·Requires zero per-task model training