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ScruticaOpen data and analysis for AI compute governance

Sovereign AI Programmes

Switzerland sovereign AI programme

Switzerland had one system of 10,752 accelerators in operation by Sep 2024.

Alps Supercomputer, from 2024; the record also covers Swiss AI Initiative

Accelerators10,752 operating
A full bar is 300,000 accelerators.

Tracked accelerators, as of 14 Sep 2024

Systems

One hardware record.

The programme’s systems
In operationCSCSGH200

Funding

Its sources give a headline amount of , also recorded as .

state no budget for the programme.

Chips and rules

Accelerators
NVIDIA’s accelerators are in its one system.Chip makers’ product pages
Fabrication
fabricates the Hopper parts that one of its systems names.Chip makers’ product pages
US export rules
Switzerland is in , outside the groups where exporting advanced AI chips needs a licence from the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 29 Oct 2026
Scrutica’s rating
Scrutica rates the programme’s dependence on NVIDIA hardware and on US technology high, on a scale of none, low, medium and high.A qualitative assessment of the programme’s chips, partners and supplier relationships, as none, low, medium or high

Partners

8

5 partners by procurement stage, besides the operators in Systems, and 3 more named in the programme’s sources.

Named in sources
CSCS, HPE, NVIDIA

Related pages

Sources

11 sources
SourceDate
Alps inauguration announcement (CSCS)7 Apr 2026
ETH Zurich: Alps inauguration and hardware specification28 Mar 2026
CSCS Alps technical specifications28 Mar 2026
Swiss AI Initiative launch28 Mar 2026
Apertus release plans, July 202528 Mar 2026
CSCS (Swiss National Supercomputing Centre): operator
CSCS: Apertus model release, 2 September 20258 Sep 2026
ETH Zurich, Globe 4/2024, page 32: CHF 20M Swiss AI Initiative funding for 2025–20288 Sep 2026
DC capacity target: main facility in Lugano; CSCS extending Alps infrastructure across Switzerland
CHF 100M capital, CHF 37M operating budget28 Mar 2026
SWI swissinfo: reported Alps capital cost and CSCS director interview8 Sep 2026
Data

This programme

Evidence trail (RSS)

Derivation chain (JSON)

All programmes

CSV

JSON with provenance

How the figures were made

Operating compute / delivered hardware. Reported operational or delivered: 10,752 NVIDIA Grace Hopper GH200 (physical hardware). The stage is assigned from reported hardware status, disbursements and commitments.

CSCS operates Alps in Lugano, with 10,752 NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips reported at its September 2024 inauguration. The system supports the Swiss AI Initiative, led by ETH Zurich and EPFL. Their multilingual Apertus models were released on 2 September 2025 for public download. Alps also serves scientific workloads, including weather forecasting for MeteoSwiss and research at the Paul Scherrer Institute.

Caveats on this record, 3

  • The GPU count is the 10,752 Grace Hopper superchips reported by ETH Zurich at the Alps inauguration on 14 September 2024.
  • SWI swissinfo reported Alps’ capital cost as CHF100M (approximately US$118M) on 3 October 2024, funded from the public purse.
  • The ETH Board allocated CHF 20M to Swiss AI Initiative research for 2025–2028.
Identifiers
Scrutica ID
sovereign-ch
Country code
CH
Name in the record
Switzerland: Alps Supercomputer + Swiss AI Initiative