Model catalogue · Aleph Alpha
Pharia
Pharia is the model from Aleph Alpha, the best-known German vendor for sovereign AI. Its distinguishing feature is the operating model: model and runtime are delivered and operated by the customer, trained on curated, copyright-checked data and optimised for German, French and Spanish. A route closed for professional secrets nevertheless does not exist, and the obstacle is exceptionally not a contractual one: the freely available weights are under a licence for non-commercial research and education and do not carry use in live client, patient or personnel work. Whether procurement through an agreement with the vendor is possible is clarified in writing before any commitment.
You can work with it - but part of the safeguard is open: either the provider does not commit to confidentiality itself, or it depends on an agreement you still have to conclude. Which of the two applies to which route is set out in the full matrix.
What it is good for
- Delivery including model weights - in self-operation the disclosure question does not arise at all
- Training on curated, copyright-checked data - a solid argument towards clients
- Optimised for German, French and Spanish
- Delivery of the full stack: model and runtime run inside the firm's infrastructure
Where it stops
- Compact model class - a performance gap to the large models on demanding analysis
- Self-operation requires hardware, operations and ownership inside the firm
- Majority Canadian ownership since April 2026 - relevant for vendor assessment, irrelevant for self-operation
- The freely available weights are under a licence for non-commercial research and education; for use in live client work the licence position has to be clarified in writing with the vendor before any commitment. Hardware is not the limit here - 7 billion parameters in BF16 occupy around 27 GB
Routes examined
The same model, procured differently, is a different legal position. What is examined per route is the contract chain, not the model.
| Route | Section 203 status | Version on this route |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated instance in Germany, operated by Gosign | conditional | - |
| Self-operated at the firm (open weights) | conditional | - |
The conditions behind a conditional status - which piece is open on which route and who closes it - are set out in the full matrix in the German catalogue, and we go through them in the conversation. The German page for Pharia carries the sources with their retrieval dates.
Is Pharia the right fit?
We go through your tasks and the route that carries them - and say plainly where it does not.
Arrange a conversation