German giants pour over $500 million into Aleph Alpha

Aleph Alpha GmbH, an artificial intelligence startup trying to build a European rival to the large language models created by OpenAI and Google, has raised more than $500 million from a consortium of industrial giants and financial investors.

Schwarz Group and the venture arm of Robert Bosch GmbH joined a group of seven new investors in the financing round, which included SAP SE and US software firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the company said in a statement on Monday.

At a press conference on Monday, Germany's vice chancellor and minister for economic affairs Robert Habeck framed the investment as a strategic national priority.


"The thought of having our own sovereignty in the AI sector is extremely important," Habeck said at the press conference.

"If Europe has the best regulation but no European companies, we haven't won much," said Habeck.