Prompted by a colleague posting the Handelblatt article about SAP investing in Aleph Alpha, I elaborated that the beauty of Aleph Alpha is GDPR-compliance and generally good data hygiene. With OpenAI, for me it’s oftentimes a “write code to do X”, with X actually being done on data that sits with me locally. But if X requires advanced natural language processing, I’d be left with nothing. In contrast with Aleph Alpha, I can essentially do X straight, always - with their technological capabilities being the only limiting factor. It’s easy to see why SAP may want to sustain Aleph Alpha as a supplier and share in the success of this local company: they are basically just down the road.

Factually wrong in the Handelsblatt article linked: their Luminous models can’t compete with “ChatGPT”, because it’s an entirely different concept. The competing offer from OpenAI would be their GPT. The only true chat application from Aleph I have seen so far is the “Minimal Conversational Agent” code sample that builds on their text completion API.