German AI company Aleph Alpha has launched Kolibri, a sovereign large language model tailored for government and industrial use. Released on October 3, 2026, the model is built to ensure data control and compliance, with a focus on native German language processing. The company, founded in 2019, currently employs approximately 200 people across four German locations.
Kolibri utilizes a mixture-of-experts architecture featuring 78 billion total parameters, with about 3 billion active per token. To optimize performance for German content, the model includes a specialized tokenizer and pre-training data where 23% consists of German-language text. The architecture supports agentic workflows, retrieval-augmented generation, and native tool calling.
The model incorporates built-in reasoning controls, allowing users to balance response speed and depth. To mitigate hallucinations and meet regulatory standards, Aleph Alpha screened the model against a blocklist of over 4.5 million URLs and verified third-party datasets for license compliance. Technical documentation regarding EU AI Act alignment is available on Hugging Face.
This release follows a definitive business agreement signed last month to merge Aleph Alpha with the Canadian firm Cohere. The combined entity will operate globally under the Cohere brand, maintaining headquarters and research centers in both Canada and Germany. The merger remains subject to final regulatory approval.
