# Aleph Alpha

German AI company that builds sovereign large language models and enterprise AI platforms for industry, public-sector, and defense customers.

- Company: Aleph Alpha
- Category: Platforms & Infrastructure
- Business model: Paid
- Availability: global
- Launched: 2019
- Tags: large-language-models, sovereign-ai, enterprise
- Website: https://www.aleph-alpha.com
- Canonical URL: https://globalaiproductindex.com/products/aleph-alpha/
- Record updated: 2026-09-10

Aleph Alpha is a German AI company founded in 2019 in Heidelberg by Jonas Andrulis and Samuel Weinbach. It develops its own large language models — starting with the Luminous family — and positions them as sovereign alternatives that run on European infrastructure, sold to enterprises and government agencies rather than consumers. The company emphasizes transparency about the sources behind generated results and publishes open research artifacts, such as German-web classifiers, on Hugging Face. In 2026 Cohere and Aleph Alpha announced a merger under which Cohere would acquire Aleph Alpha.

## Key features

- Own large language model family (Luminous) built for enterprise and government use
- Sovereign positioning: models run on European infrastructure
- Transparency features that surface the sources behind results
- Open research artifacts published on Hugging Face

## Use cases

- Public-sector and defense applications that require data to stay in Europe
- Enterprise assistants in industry, administration, and science
- Research collaborations on transparent language models

## Pricing

Aleph Alpha sells to organizations rather than consumers and does not publish list prices; commercial terms are arranged directly with enterprise and public-sector customers.

## FAQ

**What is Aleph Alpha?**

Aleph Alpha is a German AI company founded in 2019 in Heidelberg that builds the Luminous family of large language models for enterprises and government agencies.

**Are Aleph Alpha's models open source?**

No. The commercial models are proprietary; the company publishes selected open research artifacts, such as German-web classifiers, on Hugging Face.

**What happened between Aleph Alpha and Cohere?**

In 2026 Cohere and Aleph Alpha announced a merger under which Cohere would acquire Aleph Alpha; see the linked sources for the current status.

**Where is Aleph Alpha based?**

Aleph Alpha is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany.

## Sources

- [Official website](https://www.aleph-alpha.com)
- [Documentation](https://docs.aleph-alpha.com)
- [Aleph Alpha (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_Alpha)

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Data from the [Global AI Product Index](https://globalaiproductindex.com/), licensed CC BY 4.0.