What is “AG”?
AG stands for Aktiengesellschaft (German), a public limited liability company used primarily in Austria, Switzerland, Germany. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is eligible for public listing.
Full meaning & translation
The full form is Aktiengesellschaft, a German-language term. It translates literally as “Joint-stock company.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as akiengesellschaft, akt, akt gesellschaft, aktien gesellschaft.
Where it's used
AG appears in company names registered in the following 4 jurisdictions:
What it tells you about the company
Equivalent forms around the world
These are the closest structural equivalents to AG in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.
Normalizing “AG” in your data
When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — “Acme AG” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Acme AG", "country": "at"}'{
"data": {
"canonical": "acme",
"legal_type": "ag",
"tokens": [
"acme"
]
},
"meta": {
"pipeline": [
"lowercase",
"legal_suffix"
],
"confidence": 0.99
}
}Compare AG with
Frequently asked questions
What does AG stand for?
AG stands for Aktiengesellschaft (German), which translates as "Joint-stock company".
Is a AG public or private?
A AG is a public entity — it can issue shares that are listed and traded on a stock exchange.
What is the liability in a AG?
Owners of a AG have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.
Which countries use AG?
AG is used in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein.
Need to normalize AG at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.
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