Originally published on HPE Newsroom here

IN THIS ARTICLE

• Generative AI has the potential for tremendous positive impact on societies and economies – but it demands we find solutions to make it work in a trustworthy, sovereign and sustainable way
• HPE’s ongoing partnership with Aleph Alpha – now made stronger with our recent investment – will help us meet those goals

Broad consensus across industries and civil society holds that artificial intelligence (AI) will be as transformational as the web, mobile, and cloud. AI will play a critical role in unlocking solutions to some of society’s most pressing challenges and fuel advancements for business.

However, its adoption also comes with significant risks and challenges.

For example, hallucination and bias can prompt false decisions that could have severe implications for organizations and society. Training large language models (LLMs) using certain pre-built foundation models also risks exposing confidential data or intellectual property.

With these opportunities and risks in mind, in June of this year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) selected Heidelberg, Germany-based Aleph Alpha’s LLM Luminous as the foundation for our first AI private cloud service, HPE GreenLake for Large Language Models. We appreciate that Luminous was designed from the ground up to support the critical requirements of enterprises and governments for trustworthiness, traceability, and sovereignty. At the same time, benchmarks have proven Luminous is on par with the world’s leading AI language models regarding performance, while being much more efficient.

Now, we’ve taken the next step in our partnership, as Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, HPE’s venture capital arm, has joined a consortium of investors for Aleph Alpha’s series B funding round totaling more than $500 million.

This investment will strengthen the foundation for Aleph Alpha to further advance its proprietary AI research and accelerate development and commercialization of generative AI for the most complex and critical applications, such as in data sensitive industries like healthcare, finance, law, government and security. The investment benefits HPE as we deepen the strategic partnership with Aleph Alpha, positioning us to further integrate our complementary technologies and bring leading start-up innovation to the enterprise.

HPE and Aleph Alpha – a perfect match of capabilities and values

Put simply, the partnership between HPE and Aleph Alpha is mutually beneficial. HPE’s unique AI-native offerings, which is underscored by its global leadership in supercomputing already materially enable Aleph Alpha’s leading role in trustworthy and sovereign AI. Luminous is trained on an HPE supercomputer, leveraging the HPE Machine Learning Development Environment, a machine learning software platform that efficiently scales AI training, to significantly accelerate the implementation of AI models and data pipelines.

HPE also adds to Luminous’ inherent model efficiency by powering it with supercomputing technology that is sustainable by design. HPE delivers the majority of the world’s top 10 most efficient supercomputers by using sophisticated direct liquid-cooling technology instead of fans. The warm water created by the liquid cooling waste can be used for growing produce in greenhouses or heating homes.

The partnership between HPE and Aleph Alpha has already found success in several joint generative-AI projects. Our combined strengths and focus on trustworthy, sovereign and sustainable AI are perfectly suited for the strong demand in the enterprise market.

For example, together we’re helping a federal government agency implement generative AI, which includes the analysis, summary, and generation of documents critical for national security. To support these requirements, we have implemented a private on-premises LLM environment based on HPE supercomputing and AI technology, which the agency uses for training, tuning and inferencing based on its own documents and databases. This way, it benefits from the general capabilities of the Luminous model while keeping confidential data completely private.

Yet the partnership between HPE and Aleph Alpha goes far beyond technical capabilities and commercial interests – we also share a strong alignment in values and beliefs.

At HPE, our purpose is to advance the way people live and work. Generative AI has the potential for tremendous positive impact on our societies and economies. But it demands we find solutions to make it work in a trustworthy, sovereign and sustainable way.

HPE’s ongoing partnership with Aleph Alpha – now made stronger with our recent investment – will help us meet those goals.

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