Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the way science is conducted, from accelerating discoveries and assisting with software development to supporting theorem proving and data analysis. As large language models (LLMs) become an increasingly essential component of modern research, access to reliable, high-performance AI infrastructure is becoming as critical as access to computing itself.
To help meet this growing demand, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) is proud to announce the launch of its Inference API Service, a new capability that enables researchers to seamlessly integrate powerful AI models into their scientific workflows through a simple, standardized API.
Available to all CSCS users, and, through them, to the Swiss academic community, the service provides access to fully open models such as Apertus, alongside carefully selected open-weight models that enable advanced agentic AI capabilities. Compute usage is transparently tracked against each user's allocated project resources, making it straightforward to incorporate AI into existing research projects.
The new service represents an important contribution to CSCS's mission to provide Switzerland's researchers with world-class computing and data services. By lowering the barrier to using cutting-edge AI, CSCS aims to accelerate scientific innovation across disciplines, from the natural sciences and engineering to medicine and the humanities.
The Inference API Service is the result of a close collaboration between researchers, AI experts, and engineers across the Swiss AI ecosystem. Combining state-of-the-art research with CSCS's expertise in operating large-scale scientific infrastructure ensures that the platform will deliver reliable, scalable, and production-quality AI services for research.
The launch of the CSCS inference service alongside the release of Apertus 1.5 enables researchers to integrate the multimodal understanding and the enhanced reasoning capabilities of this fully open model in their scientific workflows, making AI-driven research reproducible and transparent. This important milestone advances the open AI ecosystem and demonstrates how a fully open model developed for the global good can contribute to a sovereign AI infrastructure.
The future of scientific AI has arrived, and it's now available at CSCS.
Existing CSCS users can request access to the Inference API Service today and begin bringing AI directly into their research workflows. You can visit our technical documentation for more information.