Glossary AI technique
Sovereign AI
What is sovereign AI?
Sovereign AI is AI you keep control over: you choose where models and data run, who can access them and which supplier you depend on.
The question comes up more and more: where is my data processed, does that fall under European law, and what happens if a supplier changes its terms? Sovereign AI is about those choices, from processing within the EU to open models you can host yourself.
It is not an all-or-nothing choice. Many organisations combine business AI services with data processing agreements and decide per application how much control is needed, depending on how sensitive the data is.
What matters is that you know and record your dependencies, for example in an AI policy, and that you build model-agnostic, so you can switch when needed.
Last updated: 4 October 2026