Cohere and Aleph Alpha merge with $600M from Germany's Schwarz Group to challenge US AI giants

AI startups Cohere and Aleph Alpha announced a merger backed by Schwarz Group — Germany's largest retailer — which committed $600 million in structured financing as a Series E round. The combined company aims to compete with larger US AI giants, bringing together Cohere's enterprise LLM capabilities and Aleph Alpha's European sovereign AI positioning.