Switzerland has introduced Apertus, a national-level open-source large language model, developed in collaboration between the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, ETH Zurich, and the National Supercomputing Centre. Boasting extensive training data encompassing over a thousand languages, Apertus has debuted with versions featuring 8 billion and 70 billion parameters, poised to make significant contributions to the global AI landscape.