Why ServiceNow Named Its Lightweight AI Models ‘Apriel’

When ServiceNow first released its Apriel family of small language models, I was curious about the origin of the name. I initially guessed it might be a twist on the word “April,” perhaps rooted in the Latin word aperire, meaning “to open.” But the company didn’t offer an official explanation at the time. So at this year’s ServiceNow Knowledge conference, I set out to uncover the story behind the name.

Disclosure: I attended ServiceNow's Knowledge conference as a guest of the company, which paid for my flights and hotel. However, no one at ServiceNow dictated what I should write for this post. These words are my own.

Truthfully, the answer wasn’t easy. It stumped Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang when he was on stage with ServiceNow chief Bill McDermott announcing the launch of Apriel Nemotron 15B—an open-source reasoning model the two companies jointly developed—and joked that he kept confusing it with “Aperol.” McDermott didn’t chime in with an answer.

Still, after a bit of digging, I finally got the answer—and I wasn’t entirely wrong in my guess.

According to Srinivas Sunkara, ServiceNow’s vice president of machine learning engineering, Apriel is rooted in the Latin word aperire. It also has a “smooth, neutral phonetic form that supports a clear, assistive system voice.” The company selected the name because it differs from other model acronyms and provides a “human-readable, distinctive identity”—not too generic or technical. Ultimately, Apriel is intended to reflect openness, clarity, and accessibility. It’s an SLM that is indeed open-sourced, provides answers to questions using reasoning, and is designed to be lightweight enough that any developer can deploy it efficiently across a wide range of use cases.

“Apriel is a small, high-performing language model ServiceNow built and trained entirely in-house, from data to architecture to infrastructure. It delivers strong results while using far less compute than comparable models, and helps us explore how to build smarter, more efficient AI,” Torsten Scholak, ServiceNow’s research lead at its Foundation Models Lab, shared with me in April.

As the AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly, ServiceNow will likely expand the Apriel family with new variations tailored to emerging needs. But, for now, one mystery has been put to rest: We finally know where the name came from.

Updated on 5/19/2025 at 1:59 p.m. PT: Attributed response to Srinivas Sunkara, ServiceNow’s VP of Machine Learning Engineering.

Featured Image: ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott (second from left) chats with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (far left) and “Acquired” podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal at the Knowledge 2025 conference in Las Vegas on May 6, 2025. Photo credit: Ken Yeung