Infomaniak // Companies handling sensitive data can now integrate a generative AI into their applications, hosted entirely in Switzerland and guaranteeing data control. More competitive than Mistral and OpenAI, Infomaniak’s AI as a Service is currently based on the Mixtral model, the most powerful open-source alternative to ChatGPT. Available on-demand as an API for developers, the AI interprets up to 32,000 tokens per prompt at launch, and can model, classify and analyze complex data, as well as synthesize, reformulate, correct, translate and generate complex texts.
100% hosted in Switzerland, 100% open source
Unlike ChatGPT, the language model marketed by Infomaniak is based on Mixtral 8x7B, an open-source technology whose algorithm and operation can be verified by engineers worldwide. This feature also makes it possible to make specific adaptations to design new services and restrict the use of AI for malicious actions such as spam generation.
The information processed and sent to the AI is not stored by Infomaniak and is used exclusively for the customer’s needs. Exclusively hosted in Switzerland on Infomaniak’s infrastructure, this generative AI guarantees companies total data control and full compliance with Swiss and European legislation.
As powerful as ChatGPT 3.5
The AI made available by Infomaniak is capable of processing texts in French, German, Spanish, Italian and English to rapidly execute complex programming and data analysis tasks.
“It’s only a matter of time before open source AI outperforms today’s best proprietary solutions for everyday use. It’s important to bear in mind that cloud computing today is essentially based on open technologies such as OpenStack, Kubernetes and Linux-based operating systems,” explains Marc Oehler, CEO of Infomaniak.
On the operational side, the documentation provided enables developers to easily integrate AI into corporate work environments to create virtual assistants, answer questions, summarize, classify, correct, generate, translate or perform content sentiment analysis, for example.
As eco-friendly as possible
Artificial intelligence consumes a lot of electricity. Infomaniak’s activities are powered exclusively by renewable energy. The energy efficiency ratio (PUE) of Infomaniak’s data centers in production is 1.09 on average, compared with 1.8 in Europe, because they are cooled exclusively with filtered natural air, without air conditioning. Currently undergoing intensive testing, Infomaniak’s new data center, where the most powerful GPUs will be installed, will fully recover the energy it consumes to heat up to 6,000 households in winter and over 100,000 in summer.
What’s more, Mixtral is more energy-efficient than its proprietary alternatives: its architecture manages a total of 45 billion parameters, but uses only 12 billion per token, considerably reducing energy consumption while delivering results superior to Llama 2 and ChatGPT 3.5, according to the French startup.
Low-cost pricing with 1 M free tokens
Users pay only for what they use, on a monthly basis. Billing for the service is based on a token system, which is a unit of measurement corresponding to around 4 characters.
At launch, Infomaniak’s AI as a service offers a total of 1 million tokens, and rates are lower than those of Mistral or OpenAI:
Infomaniak LLM API
Incoming tokens* (CHF): 0.0005/1000 tokens
Outgoing tokens* (CHF): 0.0015/1000 tokens
Mistral small
Incoming tokens* (CHF) : 0.00056/1000 tokens
Outgoing chips* (CHF) : 0.0017/1000 chips
GPT-3.5 Turbo
Incoming chips* (CHF) : 0.0013/1000 chips
Outgoing chips* (CHF): 0.0018/1000 chips
After creating an account, the service is available immediately, and a dashboard allows you to track your consumption in real time.
*Incoming tokens refer to requests made to the AI, and outgoing tokens refer to responses generated by the AI.
Constantly evolving
With its AI as a Service, Infomaniak is committed to constantly offering the best open-source AI technology. Initially launched with Falcon LLM, the service is now marketed with Mixtral 8x7B, and will continue to evolve in line with advances in this field.
Already implemented as an editorial assistant in its Mail Service and as a personal assistant in its kChat instant messaging, Infomaniak is actively deploying AI in its ecosystem.
“The next step is to enable users to connect our AI as a service with their data to provide 100% personalized responses. Our AI R&D team is currently running successful tests in this direction, and we look forward to offering this to businesses, with the same guarantees of confidentiality.” announces Boris Siegenthaler, strategic director at Infomaniak
Resources
Infomaniak is Switzerland’s leading developer of web technologies. With 2023 sales of over CHF 40 million and 21% growth in German-speaking Switzerland, the company employs over 220 people in Geneva and Winterthur.
Committed to privacy, the local economy and a more sustainable digital future, the company develops a suite of online collaborative tools and solutions for cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events. As an independent company, it is partly owned by its employees and solely dependent on its customers.
Infomaniak uses only renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland, without relocating. An ICANN-accredited registrar, Infomaniak’s solutions are used by millions of users. The company powers the Belgian Radio and Television (RTBF) website and provides streaming for over 3,000 radio and TV stations in Europe.
In 2023, Infomaniak won the Prix Suisse de l’Ethique and the Prix du développement durable du canton de Genève for its new data center, which will fully recover the energy it consumes to heat households.
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First published in this link of The European Times.
