Aleph Alpha

Aleph Alpha is a German AI company being absorbed by Canada's Cohere in a roughly $20 billion sovereign-AI deal announced April 2026, anchored by a $600 million commitment from retail group Schwarz. Its relationships across German public administration and defence give the merged entity a regulated-sector foothold, with the explicit pitch that enterprise and public data stays inside European infrastructure. The definitive combination agreement was signed on 16 September 2026: the merged company keeps the Cohere name and runs from Berlin and Toronto, Heidelberg stays open as a research centre, co-CEO Ilhan Scheer becomes chief operating officer, and co-founder Samuel Weinbach becomes chief research officer.