Aleph Alpha, a German startup aiming to compete with Microsoft-backed AI firm OpenAI, announced that it has successfully raised $500 million in a series B funding round. This substantial amount is quite unusual for a series B investment round. Aleph Alpha plans to utilize these funds for research on foundation models, advanced product capabilities, and the commercialization of its software. The company's CEO, Jonas Andrulis, emphasized the importance of empowering customers and maintaining flexibility in infrastructure, cloud compatibility, on-premise support, and hybrid setups.

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One of Aleph Alpha's key objectives is to promote the concept of "data sovereignty," which asserts that data stored in a particular country should be subject to that country's laws. In a European context, this means ensuring that data powering AI models is rooted in Europe rather than the United States. This concept has gained traction among European politicians and lawmakers as they seek to assert control over data storage and processing. Aleph Alpha's language models can communicate in multiple European languages and draw from a vast repository of multilingual public documents from the European Parliament.