Swiss AI Initiative Launches Open Foundation Model Apertus for Sovereign AI Development

Jun 21, 2026

AI Summary

The Swiss AI Initiative has introduced Apertus, an open foundation model developed in collaboration with EPFL, ETH Zurich, and CSCS. Designed to comply with EU AI regulations, Apertus features open weights and data, supports multilingual capabilities, and is competitive with existing models.

Apertus is a collaborative project by the Swiss AI Initiative, EPFL, ETH Zurich, and CSCS.
The model features open weights, data, and methods, ensuring documentation and reproducibility.
It is designed to comply with the EU AI Act, incorporating opt-outs, removing personal identifiable information (PII), and preventing memorization.
Apertus is available in two sizes: 8 billion and 70 billion parameters, and is multilingual, having been trained on over 1000 languages.
Swisscom is a strategic partner in the Swiss AI Initiative.
A set of 16 small language models has been released to showcase distillation and quantization techniques.
The technical report related to Apertus has been accepted at a prominent AI and NLP conference.
The fine-tuned model is utilized for in-house AI translation services.

open sourcefoundation modelsovereign aiai researchcollaboration

Swiss AI Initiative Launches Open Foundation Model Apertus for Sovereign AI Development

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