Lead: Cohere and Aleph Alpha sign definitive sovereign-AI merger
Canada’s Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha have signed a definitive business combination agreement, five months after announcing the plan. The combined company will operate as Cohere, with dual headquarters in Toronto and Berlin and Heidelberg retained as a research centre, creating what the firms call the first transatlantic sovereign AI provider for governments and regulated industries.
The deal still needs final regulatory approvals and is expected to close later in 2026. Aleph Alpha co-chief Ilhan Scheer is slated to become Cohere COO. Positioning is clear: compete with US frontier labs while keeping data, deployment, and oversight inside Canadian and German legal frameworks — including deeper work with Schwarz Digits’ STACKIT cloud. For buyers in the public sector and regulated enterprise, contract continuity and data-residency terms through closing are the practical questions.
Cohere / Aleph Alpha announcement
What else matters
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