Aitor Ormazabal
Aitor Ormazabal is a researcher at Reka whose work spans natural language processing and multimodal AI. He studied cross-lingual word embeddings and coauthored work on language models for poetry, paraphrase generation, and black-box model adaptation. He completed a doctorate on controllable NLP in 2024 and coauthored Reka's report on the Core, Flash, and Edge models. His 2025 and 2026 papers explored visually augmented language models and multimodal skill composition.
Timeline
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2015–2020
Studying mathematics and AI
From 2015 to 2019, he studies at the University of the Basque Country and earns a mathematics bachelor's degree at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. He completes a master's in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh in 2020. In 2019, he and coauthors examine limitations in cross-lingual word-embedding mappings.
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2021
Context anchoring for embeddings
In 2021, he and coauthors introduce context anchoring, which learns source-language embeddings against fixed target-language embeddings using translated context words as anchors.
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2022
Poetry and paraphrase systems
In 2022, he coauthors PoeLM, a language model that uses control codes for poetic meter and rhyme, and a parallel-corpus method for paraphrase generation.
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2023
Adapting black-box language models
In 2023, he and coauthors present CombLM, which adapts large language models to new domains and tasks by combining a fine-tuned small model with a black-box model.
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2024
A doctorate in NLP control
In 2024, he defends his doctorate at the University of the Basque Country with a thesis on general attribute controllability in NLP models.
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2024
Reka's multimodal models
In 2024, he coauthors Reka's report on Core, Flash, and Edge, multimodal language models trained to process text, images, video, and audio.
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2025–2026
Visually augmented and multimodal models
In 2025, he and coauthors present BLIND-VALM, a visually augmented language model that uses visually grounded text representations. In 2026, they study how multimodal language models compose skills across modalities.
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Since 2024
Researcher at Reka
He works as a researcher at Reka AI from 2024 onward.
Career
- Since 2024Reka AIResearcher
Education
- 2024University of the Basque CountryDoctorate
- 2020University of EdinburghMaster's in Artificial Intelligence
- 2019University of the Basque Country
- 2019National University of Distance EducationMathematics bachelor's degree
Most-cited works
- Analyzing the Limitations of Cross-lingual Word Embedding MappingsWith Eneko Agirre
- PoeLM: A Meter- and Rhyme-Controllable Language Model for Unsupervised Poetry GenerationWith Eneko Agirre
- Beyond Offline Mapping: Learning Cross Lingual Word Embeddings through Context AnchoringWith Eneko Agirre
- Latxa: An Open Language Model and Evaluation Suite for BasqueWith Eneko Agirre
- Principled Paraphrase Generation with Parallel CorporaWith Eneko Agirre
Sources and credits
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- Aitor Ormazabal — Lacuna
- Analyzing the Limitations of Cross-lingual Word Embedding Mappings
- Beyond Offline Mapping: Learning Cross-lingual Word Embeddings through Context Anchoring
- PoeLM: A Meter- and Rhyme-Controllable Language Model for Unsupervised Poetry Generation
- Principled Paraphrase Generation with Parallel Corpora
- CombLM: Adapting Black-Box Language Models through Small Fine-Tuned Models
- 2024_02_29; 10:30 Doctoral Thesis Defence Aitor Ormazabal Oregi
- Reka Core, Flash, and Edge: A Series of Powerful Multimodal Language Models
- Improving the Efficiency of Visually Augmented Language Models
- Multimodal LLMs Do Not Compose Skills Optimally across Modalities
- Alumni - Eneko Agirre

