Models
What Is Giotto AI? Switzerland’s Free Alto and Solo Models, Explained
Giotto AI is a Swiss lab that launched Alto, a free reasoning chatbot, and Solo, a one-GPU model, on October 27, 2026. What they are, cost and the controversy.
Giotto AI is the Swiss AI lab that just released two models called Alto and Solo, and it pitches them as Europe’s answer to ChatGPT and Claude. If you saw "Giotto AI" in the news this week and are trying to work out whether it is a new chatbot, a company or a painter (it is named after one), this page sorts it out.
Here is who is behind Giotto AI, what Alto and Solo do, whether it is free, how to use it on an iPhone and why the launch drew criticism within hours.
What is Giotto AI?
Giotto.ai SA is a private AI company based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was started in 2017 by former mathematics students from EPFL, the Swiss federal technology institute in Lausanne. Its CEO and co-founder is Aldo Podestà.
Before this launch, Giotto was best known for the ARC-AGI competition, a public contest of visual puzzles that are easy for people and hard for AI. The company says it placed 11th in 2024 and second in 2025 out of about 1,500 teams. It has also worked with Swiss defense technology group RUAG and Swiss health insurer Groupe Mutuel, according to Startup Fortune.
Reuters reported in September 2025 that Giotto hired the bank Lazard to raise more than $200 million at a valuation above $1 billion. As of this launch, it is not confirmed that this round has closed.
Giotto Alto vs Giotto Solo
| Giotto Alto | Giotto Solo | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Flagship reasoning model | Smaller, efficient reasoning model |
| Hardware | Runs on eight Nvidia B300 GPUs | Runs on one GPU |
| Who it is for | Everyone, plus heavy business work | Companies and agencies that keep AI in-house |
| Where you use it | cloud.giotto.ai, iPhone and Android apps, API | On-premises through partner integrators, or a dedicated cloud |
| Price for individuals | Free | Not published |
| Model size and context window | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
Giotto calls Solo "the smartest model to run on one GPU." That is the company’s own claim. Neither model has a published parameter count, and Giotto has not said which languages they support.
Is Giotto AI free?
For individuals, yes. Alto is free in the browser at cloud.giotto.ai, and you can chat anonymously without creating an account. The same free access is in the Giotto AI apps for iPhone and Android.
Business use costs money. The official press release lists three paid options:
- Shared cloud API: a flat fee for unlimited requests, one at a time, plus token packs if you need several requests running in parallel.
- Dedicated cloud: a private setup in a partner data center in Switzerland or elsewhere in Europe, rented monthly, starting at one GPU.
- On-premises: a yearly or multi-year license priced by the number and type of GPUs, from a one-GPU workstation for Solo to server racks for Alto.
Giotto did not publish euro or franc prices for any of these at launch.
What does "sovereign AI" mean here?
Sovereign AI means a country or company controls where its AI runs and where its data goes. Giotto’s press release says its cloud services have "no US dependency," are hosted in Europe and are aligned with GDPR, the EU privacy law. For a Swiss bank, hospital or government office, that can matter more than a few benchmark points, because their data never leaves European servers.
Giotto is not the only European lab chasing this market. France’s Mistral AI sells the same idea at a much larger scale; see our explainer on Mistral Large 4 for comparison.
The Giotto AI controversy
Within hours of launch, three criticisms spread on X. They are reported by outlets like Pasquale Pillitteri and Startup Fortune, and they are claims, not proven facts:
- A possible Kimi link (allegation): some users said Alto described itself as a Kimi model from China’s Moonshot AI. A chatbot naming the wrong model does not prove where its weights came from, and Giotto had not publicly responded at the time of writing.
- In-house benchmarks: every score on Giotto’s charts comes from Giotto. No independent leaderboard had tested Alto yet. Per Pillitteri’s reading of the company’s own charts, Alto trails GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 on hard science and expert questions.
- A strict license: Giotto’s terms ban reverse engineering the model and ban publishing benchmark results without the company’s written permission. Critics say that makes the claims hard to check.
Until outside testers like Artificial Analysis run their own numbers, treat Alto’s performance claims with care. Our explainer on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index shows how those independent scores work.
How to use Giotto AI on iPhone
Download the Giotto AI app from the App Store, or open cloud.giotto.ai in Safari. Both give you Alto for free. Like any chatbot, check important answers, and do not paste private information into any AI tool you have not vetted.
What this means for you
Giotto AI shows how fast the field is splitting: big US models, open Chinese models and now European "sovereign" options, each with its own trade-offs. For most people, trying a new chatbot every week is tiring. You have to learn its strengths, guess whether its claims hold up and switch apps for each task.
An agent app skips that step. Agentic AI gives you a team of expert agents on iPhone and iPad that break a job into steps and finish it together, whether that is planning a trip or comparing options. New to the idea? Read what agentic AI means.
For words like open-weight, reasoning model or on-premises, see our agentic AI glossary.
Quick answers
What is Giotto AI? A Swiss AI lab in Lausanne, Giotto.ai SA, founded in 2017. On October 27, 2026 it launched Giotto Alto and Giotto Solo, two reasoning models hosted in Europe.
Is Giotto AI free? Alto is free for individuals on cloud.giotto.ai and in the iPhone and Android apps, with no account needed on the web. Business use, the API, dedicated cloud and on-premises installs are paid.
How do I log in to Giotto AI? You do not need to. The web chat at cloud.giotto.ai works anonymously, and the mobile apps are also free.
Is Giotto AI based on Kimi? Unconfirmed. Some users on X said Alto identified itself as Kimi, but that alone does not prove which model it is built on, and Giotto had not responded publicly when this was written.
What is Giotto AI’s ARC-AGI result? The company says it placed 11th in ARC-AGI 2024 and second in ARC-AGI 2025 among about 1,500 teams.
Is Giotto AI better than ChatGPT? Not on its own charts. Giotto’s published scores show Alto behind GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 on hard reasoning tests, and no independent tests exist yet.
Sources: Giotto press release (EQS, Oct 27) · Startup Fortune · Pasquale Pillitteri · The Neuron · giotto.ai
