A group of Swiss institutions has released a new open AI model designed to serve as the foundation for future research and applications. Built by EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), this model is called “open” Apertus-Latin. The name reflects its central principles. All parts of its design and training process are publicly accessible.
Developers and organizations can use Apertus to create chatbots, translation tools, or education-focused applications. Download directly from hugging your face or accessing it from Swisscom, the initiative’s strategic partner. Two versions are available. It’s a massive scale with 8 billion parameter models and 7 billion parameter versions. Both are released under an acceptable open source license and allow for use in research, education and commercial projects.
It was built for openness
Unlike other AI systems that reveal only the details of the choice, Apertus is a completely open AI model that makes its architecture, training data and documentation available for inspection.
Marthin Jaggi, EPFL’s Machine Learning Professor and member of the Swiss AI Initiative’s steering committee, said: He said Apertus will be updated regularly by a team of engineers and researchers from CSCS, ETH Zurich and EPFL.
Thomas Schulthess, director of CSCS and professor at Eth Zurich, described Apertus as “a means of enhancing innovation and the expertise of AI in research, society and industry.” He said the project is not a typical transfer of technology from research to products, but an effort to build infrastructure for long-term use.
Multilingual reach
The training process included 15 trillion tokens in over 1,000 languages, with approximately 40% of the data being conducted in languages other than English. Apertus includes languages left behind from LLM, such as Swiss German and Romanche.
“The Apertus is built for the public good. On this scale, it is within a small number of fully open LLMSs, and is the first to embody multilingualism, transparency and compliance as fundamental design principles.”
Swisscom already deploys Apertus on its sovereign AI platform. “This underscores our commitment to shaping a safe and responsible AI ecosystem that serves the public interest and strengthens Swiss digital sovereignty,” said Daniel Dobos, research director at Swisscom.
Testing open AI models: access and real-world use
Downloading Apertus is easy for experienced users, but it requires a server, cloud resources, or a dedicated interface for actual use. Developers can test Apertus during the Swiss {AI} week, which continues until October 5th, 2025. Hackathon participants can access them via an interface hosted on Swisscom. Swisscom business customers can also start using the model today through the company’s AI platform. For international users, Apertus is available through a general AI inference utility.
“Apertus is a major AI model now. It is a model built by public institutions, for the public interest. AI is a form of public infrastructure, such as highways, water or electricity, and our best evidence is that it is our best.”
Transparency and compliance
Model weights and intermediate checkpoints are available under open source license training data. The model training process followed the transparency requirements of Swiss data protection regulations, Swiss copyright law, and EU AI law.
The dataset is limited to published information and was filtered to delete personal data and honor website opt-out requests. Ethical guidelines were also applied to rule out unnecessary material before training began.
The future of Swiss open AI models
“Apertus demonstrates that generator AI is strong and open,” said Antoine Bosselut, professor at EPFL and co-leader of the Swiss AI Initiative. “The release of Apertas is not a final step, but a long-term commitment to the foundations of journeys, open, reliable, and sovereign AI, for the public interest of the world.”
Future updates aim to expand model families, improve efficiency and develop domain-specific tools in areas such as legal, health, climate and education.
(Photo: Cory Johnson)
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