Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

Apertus Mini

A set of 16 small language models released to demonstrate distillation and quantization techniques. Developed by the Swiss AI Initiative as a collaborative effort between EPFL, ETH Zurich, and CSCS.

Open weights, open data, open science. Training data, code, weights, methods, and alignment principles - all documented and reproducible.

Apertus is to AI as Open is to Source.

Compliance and Standards

Built to meet EU AI Act requirements: the model respects opt-outs, removes PII, prevents memorization. A global foundation to build on.

Performance and Scope

Competitive with top open models at an equivalent scale of 8B and 70B parameters. Multilingual from day one - trained on 1000+ languages.

Swisscom is a Strategic Partner of the Swiss AI Initiative.