COHERE AND GERMANY’S ALEPH ALPHA MERGE AT $20 BILLION — SOVEREIGN AI CHALLENGER TO US GIANTS IS BORN Canada’s Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha announced a transatlantic merger valued at $20 billion, with Schwarz Group (parent of Lidl and Kaufland) putting in $600 million as lead backer. The deal is explicitly about building a sovereign AI alternative — letting European governments and enterprises keep their data out of U.S. tech giants’ hands. Keywords: Cohere Aleph Alpha merger, sovereign AI, European AI, enterprise AI alternative