Vienna-based startup eustella launches Version 1.5, bringing open-weight AI within reach of the global frontier

After a summer of intensive research work, eustella is laying the foundations for Europe's new AI laboratory. At the same time, the startup is expanding its platform with team and enterprise plans for businesses and improving its agent platform. To date, eustella counts more than 22,000 users across its consumer and business accounts.

VIENNA, 20 October 2026 - Washington has elevated the race for superintelligence to a matter of top state priority: US President Trump wants AI to henceforth be referred to only as "Super Intelligence," and at the White House the heads of leading AI companies have signed an agreement to that effect. Today, the Vienna-based startup eustella shows that Europe can catch up in this race. With eustella Version 1.5, the startup takes its next step, improving open-weight models through post-training and an AI system optimised for that purpose. The result is stronger performance and substantially less political and ideological influence from China based models. At the same time, eustella is opening its platform to businesses.

A summer in the lab: What eustella Version 1.5 can do

While superintelligence is on everyone's lips, the eustella team has used the summer to fundamentally improve its open-weight models: eustella optimises these models and tunes them precisely to its own AI system - an approach that works across models.

As a result, eustella v1.5 performs well in all 14 benchmarks tested and scores on average 5 points better than the chosen base model, Qwen 3.8 27B: 17.1 points in programming (LiveCodeBench v6), 10.9 in following complex instructions (IFBench), and 10.8 in complex conversations (MultiChallenge). This places the compact eustella v1.5 model of 27 billion parameters in the same league as the top models from the United States in several disciplines: on the programming benchmark LiveCodeBench, eustella reaches 89.1 percent (Claude Opus 5: 89.0, GPT-5.6 Sol: 82.6); in understanding long documents (AA-LCR) it stands at 87.5 percent, ahead of both US models (84.0 and 79.0 respectively); and on expert-level science questions (GPQA Diamond) it reaches 92.6 percent, just behind Claude Opus 5 (93.9). Compared with Mistral Medium 3.5, eustella v1.5 leads in all seven comparable benchmarks - even though the Mistral model has roughly five times as many parameters.

Charts can be found here: eustella.com/research

16x less ideological bias and influence than Chinese AI models

The most powerful open-weight models currently come predominantly from China, and they bring corresponding Chinese influence with them. Through corrections to the models, eustella v1.5 can reduce the political and ideological bias: the share of answers that reproduce the Chinese government's narrative falls from 30.4 to 1.9 percent — a reduction of 16-fold. As a result, e.g., on questions about Taiwan, the Chinese base model takes Beijing's line in 85 percent of cases, while at eustella only 2 percent of that remains.

Criticism of governments is also more balanced: the Chinese base model Qwen 3.8 27B criticises the Chinese government less often than that of the US, Russia, or the EU. With eustella v1.5, this imbalance is corrected. Eustella is continuously working to remove political bias as well as gender and racial bias, to make AI safer and fairer for everyone.

Charts can be found here: eustella.com/research

Step by step towards Europe's AI laboratory

eustella Version 1.5 is already the second major optimisation step in a matter of months. At the end of August, eustella increased usage volume for all subscriptions eight-fold by improving the model weights, without raising prices. With v1.5, a major qualitative leap now follows. Further research work is in preparation: eustella intends to develop its own AI technology step by step to secure Europe a place in the global race for the most powerful AI.

eustella for business: team and enterprise plans

With eustella v1.5, the Vienna-based startup now also offers plans for businesses and organisations. The cost for entrepreneurs or organisations will be 20 euros per user and month for the standard "Orbit" seat, or 80 euros for the premium "Constellation" seat with four times the usage volume. All customers receive their own retrieval system, integrated directly into the memory system of eustella v1.5, in addition to organisation-wide search as well as central billing and administration. For large organisations, the enterprise plan offers individual configurations, and non-profit organisations and NGOs are supported with a discount of up to 50 percent. Overall, eustella already counts more than 22,000 users. The first 25 partners already have exclusive access to the eustella API.

The European AI ecosystem

eustella is at home right in the heart of the Austrian AI ecosystem: the startup is a co-worker at the AI Factory Austria AI:AT coworking hub in Vienna-St. Marx. It was here that eustella also launched its platform in June, with guests from Mistral AI, Bitpanda and IONOS Cloud on the podium. The hub counts more than 200 co-workers and brings together startups, research, industry, and the public sector. For young teams like eustella, that means access to expertise, potential partners, and visibility within the ecosystem.

Behind this is a European endeavour. AI:AT is Austria's national AI Factory within the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and is co-financed by the EU and Austria. It is one of 19 AI Factories in 16 countries with which Europe is building its own computing capacity and AI competence. AI:AT combines AI-optimised high-performance infrastructure with the hub and accompanies organisations from business, public administration, and applied research as a market-neutral, independent access point from the first use case to practical implementation.

The development of eustella, from the AI agent app in June to the targeted post-training of open models in Version 1.5, shows what can emerge in a vibrant AI ecosystem. When startup dynamics, research, trustworthy AI development, community, and European infrastructure come together, European AI sovereignty moves a step closer.

"Only a few months after the launch, eustella has come through decisively with Version 1.5. It is exactly for teams like these that the AI Factory Austria AI:AT was set up: we create an environment in which AI competence, partners, and pathways to high-performance infrastructure come together. The more of them grow here, the more independent Europe becomes in a key technology." - Karl Kugler, Co-Lead AI Factory Austria AI:AT

"Competitive AI needs computing power, data, and know-how in Europe. That is precisely what the AI Factories of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking are laying the foundations for. Startups like eustella show just how much pace European teams are setting here." - Markus Stöhr, Co-Lead AI Factory Austria AI:AT

"In the US, the era of superintelligence is being declared right now. Europe cannot continue to just watch it happen," says Matteo Rosoli, CEO of eustella. "This summer we have shown that a European team, with open models and its own research, can move within reach of the global frontier - and do so with European values. eustella v1.5 is only the beginning. Our goal is to secure for Europe a place on the world map in the age of AI."

About eustella

eustella is the leading European provider of sovereign AI, based in Vienna. By combining high-performing proprietary AI systems, a purely European cloud infrastructure, and strategic partnerships, eustella creates the technological foundation for digital independence in Europe.

Free to use material for the press © eustella

About the AI Factory Austria AI:AT

The AI Factory Austria AI:AT is Austria's national AI Factory within the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. It is led jointly by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and Advanced Computing Austria (ACA) and implemented through an Austria-wide consortium. The partners of the consortium are: TU Wien, Universität Wien, Universität für Bodenkultur Wien (BOKU), Universität Innsbruck, TU Graz Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (JKU), Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW), INiTS - Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator as well as the EODC - Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH. AI:AT combines AI-optimised high-performance infrastructure with a physical hub and supports organisations from business, public administration, and applied research as a market-neutral, independent access point along the AI journey - from the first use case to practical implementation. The AI Factory Austria AI:AT is co-financed by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 101253078.

Inquiries

David Huemer Founders Associate dh@eustella.com eustella.com