{"id":80611,"date":"2023-11-08T05:20:29","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T13:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/how-europe-is-racing-to-resolve-its-ai-sovereignty-woes\/"},"modified":"2023-11-08T05:20:29","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T13:20:29","slug":"how-europe-is-racing-to-resolve-its-ai-sovereignty-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/how-europe-is-racing-to-resolve-its-ai-sovereignty-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"How Europe is racing to resolve its AI sovereignty woes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

While not yet as illustrious as its North American counterparts OpenAI, Anthropic, or Cohere, Europe\u2019s own cohort of generative AI <\/span>startups<\/span><\/a> is beginning to crystallise. Just yesterday, news broke that Germany\u2019s Aleph Alpha had raised \u20ac460mn, in one of the largest funding rounds ever for a European AI company.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The European tech community received news of the investment with some enthusiasm. While much focus has been on how the EU will regulate<\/a> the tech (and how the UK will or will not<\/a>), there hasn\u2019t been a whole heap of attention on how the bloc will support artificial intelligence innovation and reduce the risk of being left behind in yet another technological leap.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During a press conference about the investment, Germany\u2019s Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck stressed the importance of supporting domestic <\/span>AI<\/span><\/a> enterprises.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe thought of having our own sovereignty in the AI sector is extremely important,\u201d Habeck said. \u201cIf Europe has the best regulation but no European companies, we haven\u2019t won much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Transparency, traceability, and sovereignty<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At the same press conference, Jonas Andrulis, Aleph Alpha\u2019s founder and CEO, stated that the investors participating in the latest round (including the likes of SAP, Bosch Ventures, and owners of budget supermarket giant Lidl) were all partners the company had worked with before. Notably, all but a small contribution from Hewlett Packard came from <\/span>European<\/span><\/a> investors or grants.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was so important for me, right from the beginning with our research, is transparency, traceability, and sovereignty,\u201d Andrulis added, playing on ethical considerations that could potentially set a European LLM apart, as well as geopolitical objectives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aleph Alpha is building a large language model (LLM) similar to OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4, but focusing on serving corporations and governments, rather than individual consumers. But there are other things separating the two companies \u2014 OpenAI has 1,200 employees, whereas 61 people work at Aleph Alpha. Furthermore, the former has secured over \u20ac11bn in funding.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, with the construction of the \u20ac2bn Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (Ipai) in Aleph Alpha\u2019s hometown of Heilbronn in southwest Germany, the startup may end up receiving the boost it needs to level the playing field. Construction of Ipai is slated to be complete in 2027, by when it will be able to accommodate 5,000 people. The project is supported by the <\/span>Dieter Schwarz Foundation, which also participated in Aleph Alpha\u2019s latest funding round.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s lack of AI contender geopolitical issue<\/h2>\n

Founded in 2019, Aleph Alpha is not a newcomer to the game. In 2021, before ChatGPT-induced investment hysteria, the company raised \u20ac23mn, in a round led by Lakestar Advisors. Such an amount has, of course, since been overshadowed by numbers in the billions of dollars on the other side of the Atlantic. However, Aleph Alpha did raise another \u20ac100mn, backed by Nvidia among others, in June this year. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And the German startup isn\u2019t the only European player raking in the dough.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Only a few weeks after the company\u2019s founding in May this year, France\u2019s Mistral AI raised \u20ac133mn in the reportedly largest-ever seed round for a European startup.<\/p>\n

Presenting a challenge to Aleph Alpha\u2019s claim to the European GenAI throne, the company is also developing an LLM for enterprises. Although, its very first model, <\/span>Mistral 7B, is totally free to use.<\/span><\/a> In its pitches to investors, Mistral, founded by former Google and Meta employees, <\/span>reportedly warned<\/span><\/a> it was a \u201cmajor geopolitical issue\u201d that Europe did not have its own serious contender in generative AI.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Germany\u2019s is not the only government looking to shore up domestic generative AI capabilities. The Netherlands recently <\/span>commenced the development of its very own homegrown LLM<\/span><\/a> to provide what it said would be a \u201ctransparent, fair, and verifiable\u201d GenAI alternative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While not yet as illustrious as its North American counterparts OpenAI, Anthropic, or Cohere, Europe\u2019s own cohort of generative AI startups is beginning to crystallise. Just yesterday, news broke that Germany\u2019s Aleph Alpha had raised \u20ac460mn, in one of the largest funding rounds ever for a European AI company.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[408,2668,1062,2644],"tags":[406,2667,1061,2643],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}