The Cohere-Aleph Alpha merger is running behind schedule, Handelsblatt reported on 3 July1. Cohere is a Canadian enterprise-AI firm; Aleph Alpha is Germany's best-funded sovereign-AI developer, and the deal was announced in April at a roughly $20bn valuation with a €500m anchor from the retail-and-tech conglomerate Schwarz Group.
Three points remain unresolved: the scope of employee transfers to Cohere, the leadership of the merged company, and the design of German-government protective rights. Berlin drives the third. It wants sovereignty guarantees written as enforceable deal terms, and turning a political promise into golden-share-style control that Cohere's Canadian and US investors will also accept is proving slow. All parties say they "continue working constructively"2.
Infineon's fab opened months early on public co-funding, yet the €20bn merger Berlin is anchoring still cannot close on the legal fine print. Building a champion by consolidation is proving harder than building one in concrete, because the sovereignty condition has to survive three countries' company law at once.
