(Kavalenkava Volha/Getty Images)

sovereign AI

Switzerland launches “Apertus,” an open-source AI model trained on public data

Countries are racing to build “sovereign AI,” and Switzerland is the latest country to release its own open-source AI model for anyone to use.

Jon Keegan

9/4/25 12:56PM

True to its tradition of neutrality and independence, Switzerland is moving closer to securing its own “sovereign AI.”

Wary of reliance on American and Chinese startups for access to cutting-edge AI, countries are taking steps to develop domestic AI infrastructure.

That includes the AI models that run on the data centers inside a country’s borders. A group of Swiss universities teamed up to develop “Apertus” (Latin for “open”), a large multilingual language model trained excessively on public data.

The model was released by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, along with universities École Spéciale de Lausanne and ETH Zurich.

The Apertus 2 model is roughly comparable to Meta’s last-gen Llama 3 AI model, and was trained on 15 trillion tokens and 1,000 languages including Swiss German and Romansh, which is a national language of Switzerland.

Switzerland telecom company Swisscom AG has partnered with AI chip leader Nvidia to build out its domestic AI infrastructure for Swiss businesses.

The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre is home to “Alps,” an AI computing cluster filled with over 10,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs that was built for Swiss researchers.

Having a free model that was built domestically, with full transparency, will help domestic businesses that use the model to comply with the strict data protection and intellectual property laws in Europe.

Jon Keegan, Matt Phillips

14h

Alibaba researchers devise efficient GPU pooling system, reducing GPU use 82%

Drastically reducing the amount of GPUs needed for running AI models could have big consequences for the scale of huge data centers, while benefiting smaller organizations. It also could reduce demand for pricey new GPUs from Nvidia.

Blue and Orange 3D Cubes Representing Interconnected AI Systems and Digital Transformation

Rani Molla14h

Apple closes at record high for first time in 2025

After spending the day at intraday highs, Apple set an all-time closing high of $262.24 Monday, following reports of increased iPhone 17 sales and an analyst upgrade. Loop Capital raised its price target to a Street high of $315.

The stock’s previous all-time closing high was in December 2024.

Apple reports its fiscal year 2025 results later this month, during which analysts expect the company’s all-important iPhone sales to return to growth.

A tale of two Teslas from two analyst notes by guys named Dan

Ahead of Tesla’s third-quarter earnings, Barclays’ Dan Levy and Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives weigh in.

Rani Molla16h

Jon Keegan17h

Data center frenzy taxes natural resources, sparks anger around the globe

The race to build ever-larger power-hungry data centers isn’t limited to the US. In Ireland, more than 20% (!!!) of the country’s electricity is consumed by data centers. In Mexico, poor communities near data center sites are seeing water supplies dry up and their fragile power grids falter.

A New York Times report examines what these data center projects look like around the world and tracks the local opposition mounted by environmental groups seeking to block future projects.

The report notes that despite growing local opposition, countries are still bending over backward to lure the billions of dollars in investment that come with these data center projects, offering rich tax incentives to the companies developing the projects, in exchange for a relatively small number of jobs and promises of various, if vague, local benefits.

Much like in the US, the data center deals are shrouded in secrecy, with elected officials required to sign NDAs and the extensive use of shell companies masking the identity of the massive tech companies behind the projects.

AI Data Centers Create Fury From Mexico to Ireland

A New York Times report examines what these data center projects look like around the world and tracks the local opposition mounted by environmental groups seeking to block future projects.

OpenAI claimed a math breakthrough this weekend, only to be smacked down

The embarrassing episode sprouted from a misunderstood post, amplified by an OpenAI executive as proof of GPT-5’s mathematical prowess, but turned out not to be what it seemed.

Jon Keegan19h