Aleph Alpha, founded in 2019 in Heidelberg, builds specialised sovereign language models. Kolibri, a 78B mixture-of-experts model released October 2026, targets German-language public-sector and industrial users. A binding deal signed September 2026 will merge the company into Cohere, pending approval.
Aleph Alpha is a Heidelberg AI company founded in 2019 that builds sovereign language models for governments and regulated industries. Its newest model, Kolibri, has 78 billion parameters with about 3 billion active per token, and the company signed an agreement in September 2026 to merge into Cohere.
Founded: 2019 · HQ: Heidelberg, Germany · Team: ~200 · CEO: Ilhan Scheer · Funding: $500+ million (Series B, Nov 2023) · Valuation: Not disclosed
About Aleph Alpha
Aleph Alpha is a Heidelberg-based AI company founded in 2019 by Jonas Andrulis and Samuel Weinbach, among others, to build sovereign AI for governments and regulated industries in Europe. It spent its first years on the Luminous language models and a hosted API, closed its Series B in November 2023 at over half a billion dollars, and then narrowed its focus. Since 2025 it has described itself as a builder of specialised large language models for public administration, industry and defense-related settings, with about 200 people across four German sites (Heidelberg, Berlin, Bayreuth and Munich). The vendor's own management page, read on 23 October 2026, lists Ilhan Scheer as CEO and Samuel Weinbach as co-founder and Co-Chief Research Officer; Andrulis is no longer listed.
The product line today is small and deliberate. Kolibri, released on 3 October 2026, is a 78-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with about 3 billion parameters active per token, built for German and English, with German making up roughly 23 percent of its pre-training data and a tokenizer tuned to German. Aleph Alpha says it supports agentic workflows, retrieval-augmented generation and native tool calling, and that in RAG use it is trained to decline when the supplied documents do not support an answer. Around the model sits an adaptive platform that the vendor offers on-premise, air-gapped or as sovereign SaaS, with document processing, an agent runtime that logs every step, and model inference behind a Responses API.
The corporate picture changed fast in 2026. In January the company cut about 50 jobs to focus on its core customers. On 24 April it announced plans to combine with Cohere, with the Schwarz Group intending to lead Cohere's Series E with a structured 500 million euro financing. On 16 September the two signed a binding business combination agreement: the merged company will operate under the Cohere name, keep Heidelberg as a research centre, and add Berlin and Toronto as headquarters. Ilhan Scheer is slated to become Cohere's COO and Samuel Weinbach its Chief Research Officer once the deal closes, which still needs regulatory approval and is expected before the end of 2026. Until then Aleph Alpha says it operates independently.
Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs a general-purpose frontier model, many languages, or a large partner ecosystem will usually be better served by OpenAI, whose catalog is far broader. Teams already standardised on a hyperscaler cloud often start with what Google sells instead, and those who want open weights from a European lab with wider language coverage can look at the range from Mistral AI, such as Mistral Large 3. Aleph Alpha's own pitch is narrower: German-language, on-premise or air-gapped deployment with documented training-data provenance. The pending Cohere deal is also a reason to ask about roadmap and contract terms before committing to a multi-year build on today's stack.
If you are comparing vendors on cost and fit rather than sovereignty, start with our guide on how to choose the right LLM and the cheapest LLM API comparison; the Azure route through Microsoft suits enterprises that already buy there, and the smaller model builder AI21 Labs also targets enterprise buyers. Aleph Alpha does not publish list prices; access to Kolibri and the platform is arranged through its sales team, so budget questions need a demo request first.
Mission
To research and build specialised sovereign language models that let governments and regulated industries keep control over how AI is developed, deployed and governed.
Products
- Kolibri
- Adaptive Platform
- Document AI
- Forward-deployed services
Aleph Alpha Models on HokAI
Links
Frequently Asked Questions
How much funding has Aleph Alpha raised?
Aleph Alpha announced a Series B of more than 500 million US dollars on 6 November 2023, led by Ipai, Bosch Ventures and the Schwarz Group, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, SAP, Christ&Company and Burda Principal Investments also joining. The company has not published a valuation. In April 2026 the Schwarz Group separately said it intends to put 500 million euros into Cohere's Series E as part of the planned combination.
What does Aleph Alpha sell today?
Its main product is Kolibri, a specialised sovereign language model released on 3 October 2026, plus an adaptive platform for document processing, agent orchestration and model inference. The platform runs on-premise, air-gapped or as sovereign SaaS. The vendor does not list prices; access starts with a sales or demo request.
Is Aleph Alpha being acquired by Cohere?
The two companies signed a binding business combination agreement on 16 September 2026, and the combined company will operate under the Cohere name. The deal still needs regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2026. Until then Aleph Alpha says it continues to operate independently.
What are good alternatives to Aleph Alpha?
Mistral AI is the closest European option with open-weight models. Cohere is the pick for secure enterprise deployment and is the intended merger partner. OpenAI or Anthropic suit teams that want frontier capability and are content with a US vendor.
How do I start with Aleph Alpha Kolibri?
Kolibri is published on Hugging Face with its license terms and documentation, and the vendor offers API access through a sign-up form on its site. Enterprise platform deployment is arranged with the sales team. Read the technical report first if you need the copyright, privacy and EU AI Act notes.
Top Alternatives
- Mistral AI: Pick Aleph Alpha for German-language, on-premise public-sector work; pick Mistral for a broader open-weight, multilingual model range.
- Cohere: Cohere is the larger enterprise platform and the planned merger partner; Aleph Alpha is the German-specialised model builder joining it.