Proton upgrades privacy-focused chatbot to rival Big Tech AI models in European sovereignty push
Swiss privacy company Proton has launched a major upgrade to Lumo, its AI chatbot, as Europe accelerates efforts to build sovereign AI services that reduce reliance on US technology giants.
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Swiss privacy company Proton has launched a major upgrade to Lumo, its AI chatbot, as Europe accelerates efforts to build sovereign AI services that reduce reliance on US technology giants.
- Lumo 2.0 claims to finally match US rivals on performance without sacrificing privacy.
- European sovereign AI is a growing market, driven by governments and businesses wanting out of US tech dependency.
- Swiss firm Proton is evolving from a privacy tools company into an AI platform.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The company says Lumo 2.0 is significantly smarter than the version it launched last year, addressing one of the biggest criticisms from early users: strong privacy protections, but AI performance that often lagged behind its rivals.
Proton is best known for its VPN service, but it also offers privacy-focused alternatives to Google products, including email, cloud storage and now AI.
When Lumo debuted last year, many users praised its privacy credentials but complained that the chatbot was too restrictive and frequently refused harmless requests.
Some Reddit users advised using it only for simple questions or topics they did not want to share with larger AI providers.
“I really want it to be better, but it's just not there,” said one poster on a five month old r/lumo thread.
“I just use it for stuff that I would rather not the big AI outfits. It's not bad, but it's also not good. I hope it gets some development because it's really a pretty unique offering in the LLM space.”
Now it would seem their hopes have been addressed, with Proton claiming Lumo 2.0 has been rebuilt on a new architecture and now offers advanced reasoning, allowing it to tackle more complex questions and multi-step tasks.
In a blog announcing the release, the firm claims the upgraded bot can also analyze and generate images, search the web with live source citations, and remember user preferences through encrypted, user-controlled memory for more personalised conversations.
Sovereign AI
A key part of Proton's pitch is that users do not have to trade privacy for better AI.
Unlike many popular chatbots, Proton claims that Lumo runs on infrastructure located in Europe and operates under Swiss privacy laws.
The firm says conversations are protected by zero-access encryption, are never logged, never shared with third parties, and are not used to train future AI models.
Foundational models
Rather than relying on proprietary models from OpenAI or Google, Lumo uses a mix of open-source foundation models. According to Proton, these currently include Qwen 3.5, GLM 5.2, Image-Turbo and FireRed-Image-Edit-1.1.
The company says the models run exclusively on servers it controls, ensuring user data never leaves Proton's infrastructure. The service is also open source, allowing independent researchers to inspect the code and verify Proton's privacy and security claims.
Closing in on frontier AIs
Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen, a former particle physicist at CERN, claims that he built the firm to advocate for digital freedom and challenge the data-monetization models of Big Tech. Yen claims the latest version of Lumo is set to rival US frontier models.
“User testing demonstrates that the gap has closed to the point that for many use cases, users can no longer perceive a qualitative difference between Lumo 2.0 Max and the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic," he said.
"Lumo 2.0 demonstrates that users no longer need to choose between powerful AI capabilities and meaningful privacy protections,” he added.
"Users can no longer perceive a qualitative difference between Lumo 2.0 Max and the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic."Proton founder and CEO, Andy Yen
The firm is also targeting businesses concerned about sensitive company information being exposed through AI tools with Lumo for Business, which claims to keep conversations encrypted, does not log employee prompts, and does not use company data to train AI models.
Because the service runs on European servers, Proton stresses that customer data is not subject to US data collection requests.
A bot for Europe
Lumo's launch comes as Europe ramps up investment in sovereign AI and digital infrastructure.
France recently unveiled a €655 million AI initiative that includes developing a chatbot for public sector workers; while European messaging platforms are gaining momentum as governments and organizations seek alternatives to US technology providers.
Proton also appears to be competing on price as well as privacy. The chatbot upgrade includes a free tier, with paid plans starting at €12.99 a month and business pricing from €14.99 per user.
Strong password generator
That’s below the roughly $20-a-month price point (€18) associated with premium consumer offerings from ChatGPT and Claude.