About Apertus

Apertus is Switzerland’s first large-scale, fully open, multilingual language model. Developed by researchers at ETH Zurich, EPFL, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), it represents a new approach to foundation model development: built by public institutions, for the public good.

The name comes from the Latin word for “open” — reflecting the model’s defining characteristic. Unlike commercial models developed behind closed doors, Apertus makes its architecture, weights, training data, and methods fully accessible and documented.

Apertus is not a product like ChatGPT. Apertus is foundational infrastructure — designed to support innovation across research, education, government, and industry while remaining aligned with Swiss and European values of transparency, neutrality, and accountability.

For questions and requests: llm-requests@swiss-ai.org

Swiss AI Initiative

The Swiss AI Initiative is a national research effort to build capabilities for advanced, trustworthy AI systems for the benefit of society. Launched in December 2023, it is co-led by ETH Zurich and EPFL. Apertus is one of several projects within the Initiative, which spans research in foundation models, AI safety, applications, and education.

The Initiative represents the world’s largest open science effort dedicated to AI foundation models. It pursues an open science approach to increase transparency and access for startups, SMEs, large companies, and the public sector — in Switzerland and beyond.

Contact: info@swiss-ai.org

Swisscom is a Strategic Partner of the Swiss AI Initiative. Please visit our website for information on how to join the Initiative with your organization.