German telecommunications operator Deutsche Telekom has become the first provider to commercialise the use of the OpenGPT-X Teuken-7B language model, developed by a consortium led by the Fraunhofer Institutes IAIS and IIS, with other partners including the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the Juelich Research Center.
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Teuken-7B Language Model
The Teuken-7B language model, trained on the JUWELS supercomputer, has been available under an open-source licence since November 26. Deutsche Telekom said it has transitioned this European language model from research to commercial, making it accessible for European businesses and public authorities.
"If not now, when does Europe need more sovereign solutions? Only through joint European efforts we can create competitive alternatives to major international providers. Teuken-7B from OpenGPT-X is a flagship project 'Made in Germany' and a crucial component in the digital strategies of customers who prioritise sovereignty," said Ferri Abolhassan, CEO of T-Systems and Member of the Board of Deutsche Telekom AG.
EU-Backed Project OpenGPT-X
With the EU project OpenGPT-X, which has a total budget of approximately EUR 14 million and is funded by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), Germany is driving the development of open and trustworthy AI language models. This initiative enhances digital sovereignty and provides German authorities and institutions access to cutting-edge European generative AI (GenAI) technology, Deutsche Telekom said.
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Supports 24 EU Official Languages
The Teuken-7B model is designed to be multilingual, offering energy and cost efficiency through a specially developed tokenizer. The model supports all 24 EU official languages with optimised performance.
Deployment Options
With AI Foundation Services, Telekom subsidiary T-Systems provides flexible deployment options. Businesses can operate models in certified Telekom data centers in Germany, in compliance with GDPR across Europe, or even on their own infrastructure, the German operator said in a statement on Monday.
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Integration of Model into Existing Systems
Additionally, the Teuken-7B model is seamlessly integrated into Telekom's standardised Business GPT product. It supports retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications and combines document summarization with enterprise-grade chatbot capabilities. Through a unified API, businesses can integrate the model into existing AI assistants, agents, and proprietary chatbots, Deutsche Telekom explained.
