100 million for Aleph Alpha?
SAP is flirting with a German AI startup
03/31/2023, 2:50 p.m
The lead of US tech companies in artificial intelligence seems unassailable. Jonas Andrulis wants to change that with his AI startup Aleph Alpha. But for that he needs money. He could get that from a European software giant.
According to a report by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the European software group SAP is planning to enter the German ChatGPT rival Aleph Alpha. According to information from the company’s environment, SAP wants to invest less than 100 million euros in the AI startup from Heidelberg. A decision could be made in the next two to three weeks. However, neither SAP nor Aleph Alpha have commented on the information so far.
So far, founder Jonas Andrulis’ young company has raised around $28 million from venture capitalists such as Earlybird Venture Capital, Lakestar, UVC Partners and Cavalry Ventures. The start-up should have attracted the attention of other investors at the latest with the result of their last comparison test: In a standardized performance comparison at the end of February, Aleph Alpha with its AI language model Luminous performed as well as the previously leading AI specialist OpenAI or the model of the Facebook Corporate meta.
According to the industry portal “Gründerszene”, existing investors in Aleph Alpha see the potential entry of SAP as an opportunity, as a European AI company, not to be left behind by companies like OpenAI from the USA or Asian companies. In order to become really dangerous to the competition, Andrulis’ company cannot avoid raising more capital. For comparison: Microsoft has invested ten billion dollars in OpenAI. Google is investing around $300 million in AI startup Anthropic.
In February, Andrulis said in an interview with ntv.de that it is now being decided who will shape the future of AI and who can dominate the value chain. “Of course, there have been better times for collecting money from investors. But artificial intelligence is the topic of the moment. Investors have recognized that too.”