What is sovereign AI?

Sovereign AI refers to a nation or organisation’s ability to build and deploy their own AI models using their own infrastructure, resources, data, networks, and workforce.

The opportunities to improve services and accelerate innovation make artificial intelligence (AI) an attractive prospect for businesses. At the same time, countries and businesses are increasingly looking for ways to keep their AI models close to home.

Keeping customer data in-house makes it easier to maintain security and privacy. It also gives businesses full control over AI outputs, helping ensure they align with company policies, local laws, and cultural expectations.

AI sovereignty gives entities the autonomy to control their AI technologies independently. In this guide, we’ll dive deeper into how this works and how it could benefit you.

As you can imagine, AI sovereignty requires a deeply strategic approach to become a reality. Here are the five key pillars that make it possible.

You can’t build sovereign AI models without sovereign data. Nations and organisations need to control the whole process, from how their data is collected and stored to how it's accessed and transported. All of this safeguards personally identifiable information while ensuring AI systems align with local legislation.

As you might expect, achieving data sovereignty requires entities to have control over their own physical and digital infrastructure. This includes hyperscale data centres and computing systems that can process data efficiently to maintain strong data localisation standards.

Rather than relying on external agencies, governments and countries need to be able to leverage their own skilled workforce to deploy AI agents and models, and innovate new solutions. This often means upskilling professionals with AI and machine learning (ML) education or encouraging students to pursue careers in the industry.

Speaking of innovation, organisations and nations also need to be committed to investing in their own AI initiatives. It isn’t enough to rely on imported solutions. Building sovereign AI means supporting local talent to fund state-of-the-art research tailored to unique challenges.

Ultimately, AI sovereignty is about upholding national or organisational interests. Whether it’s securing a nation’s security or achieving economic competitiveness, sovereign AI capabilities should give entities the opportunity to use artificial intelligence for their own benefit and to solve their own unique problems.

Generative AI has impacted every single nation, industry, and business in the world. The market is expected to reach almost $70 billion USD by the end of 2025, and $442 billion USD only six years later.

The benefits of generative AI are no secret, more opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and creativity, to name a few. However, there’s a concern that, because AI is universal, the ability for nations to solve their own problems and uphold their own security will become challenging.

If a country needs to rely on foreign providers for their AI tech, this raises a few alarm bells:

• Laws and culture: If an AI model is built with a specific country’s laws and culture in mind, this won’t necessarily translate to fair, non-biased, and compliant outcomes in another region, especially when languages and societal values differ.
• Privacy: AI models require enormous amounts of data. When that data is processed through external providers, this increases the risk of exposure and mishandling, particularly when the external provider operates under different privacy laws.
• Accountability: AI platforms are now used for critical functions such as self-driving cars and healthcare diagnostics. If these solutions go wrong, the provider should be held accountable. This can only happen if they’re within a country’s jurisdiction.
• Geopolitics: If a major provider decides to withdraw access to their AI technologies due to geopolitical tensions or tightening regulations, this could put countries and companies out of the AI race entirely.

All of these issues boil down to one thing: uncertainty. Technological dependency means a nation can never be confident in its ability to keep AI unbiased and reliable, ensure proper data management, innovate on home soil, and stay competitive for the long term.

Sovereign AI capabilities let countries and organisations take back control of their AI, safe in the knowledge they’ll always have their own solution to rely on that is trustworthy, transparent, and aligned with their unique strategic priorities.

Now that we’ve discussed the rise of sovereign AI and why it’s taken place, let’s dive a little deeper into the advantages. Here are five benefits to consider.

• Compliance: Sovereignty allows every government and business to build AI models that comply with local laws for data sovereignty, which is especially important when adhering to strict data protection requirements such as the Australian Privacy Act or GDPR.
• Data security and data privacy: Sovereign AI ensures businesses know exactly how their data is handled, stored, and processed. Aside from achieving compliance, this also reduces the AI security risk of data breaches and the loss of customer trust.
• Tailored solutions: Sovereign AI lets entities build their own models to solve their own problems and cater to local requirements. All of this helps maintain a competitive advantage.
• National security: On a broader scale, sovereign AI infrastructure gives a country control over its own systems, which can alleviate cybersecurity concerns and offer a safeguard during geopolitical tensions.
• Economic benefits: Developing and maintaining AI onshore requires infrastructure and expertise. AI sovereignty creates new jobs and stimulates investment in upskilling and education, adding value to local economies.

All of this creates a framework for countries and organisations to innovate AI models that solve complex issues. Whether it’s revitalising indigenous languages, protecting against cybersecurity concerns, or supporting sustainability efforts, AI sovereignty equips every government and business with the tools to tackle the concerns most relevant to them.

Sovereign AI isn’t one-size-fits-all. There are several different ways nations and businesses are taking back control of their data and AI solutions. Here are six to consider:

• AI Factories: These state-of-the-art domestic AI data centres are built to handle the intensive demands of artificial intelligence. They contain the computing power required to build, train, and then deploy AI models at scale.
• Sovereign AI Clouds: Many nations are opting to build their AI models on sovereign AI clouds located within national borders. These cloud solutions often use hybrid cloud infrastructure, blending public cloud flexibility with the strict controls of a private cloud, to manage data responsibly while still facilitating rapidly scalable AI development.
• Public-private alliances: Governments regularly partner with domestic AI tech companies to build AI solutions. This brings the best of both worlds: the regulatory oversight of governments and the deep technical expertise of private businesses.
• AI policies and frameworks: Certain countries are introducing specific legislations and policies to establish safeguards for the development of AI within their borders, such as data localisation and data residency requirements.
• National LLM solutions: Several countries are beginning to develop large language models built for local languages and cultures. This levels the playing field by giving everyone access to generative AI, regardless of the language they speak.
• Open-source models: Other nations are creating open-source AI frameworks that are transparent and jointly owned. In essence, this gives all organisations within a country the freedom to adapt and build upon the framework for their own needs.

To put everything into perspective, here are six real-world initiatives that show how nations are putting sovereign AI models into action.

In late 2024, the Australian Government revealed its National AI Capability Plan , an initiative that will see billions of dollars invested to strengthen AI capabilities, upskill workers, and boost the national economy. Ultimately, the goal is to take a measured but ambitious approach to growing Australia’s AI capabilities over the coming decade. The full plan is expected to come into effect toward the end of 2025.

The Indonesian Government partnered with Nvidia in November 2024 to launch Sahabat-AI , a sovereign AI initiative to build large language models (LLMs) in Bahasa and other local languages. As part of the initiative, the government wants to build a fully-functioning AI ecosystem that benefits every industry from finance to healthcare, all while allowing Indonesia to advance its digital independence.

Back in April 2024, China launched its National Supercomputing Internet Platform , which connects all of the country’s supercomputing centres into one integrated cloud-based network. This has created an enormous wealth of applications, with over 3,200 products currently available on the platform, from industrial simulation solutions to AI models.

Denmark unveiled Gefion , the country’s flagship AI supercomputer, in partnership with Nvidia back in October 2024. The goal is to accelerate innovation in dozens of industries, from education and sustainability to drug discovery, all while promoting autonomous AI rooted in Denmark’s unique needs and culture.

India’s Bhashini platform is a new sovereign AI initiative that aims to remove barriers within the country, giving everyone access to digital services in their native language. Given there are over 121 distinct languages in India, including Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, and Gujarati, the hope is that Bhashini will open new doors for collaboration and communication across the country.

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in the UAE unveiled its Falcon 3 open-source AI model in December 2024. Trained on 14 trillion tokens, the model supports generative and conversational use cases in various languages. And, as it’s open source, the door is open for other nations and companies to fine-tune the model for their own needs.

Generative AI is changing the world, but with it come concerns that nations and businesses will become too dependent on solutions that don’t align with their laws and values. Sovereign AI levels the playing field, letting every entity develop AI solutions that align with their needs.

What does the future hold? It’s fair to anticipate that regulations will continue to get tighter as new use cases open up for generative AI. As corporate and national AI strategies become more sophisticated, customer concerns and government policies will never be far behind.

The key to staying prepared is putting in the legwork early to find the right AI service provider with robust security policies and guardrails. Get ahead of the curve early, and you’ll reap the benefits as you explore new ways to leverage generative AI solutions to the fullest.

With Salesforce AI, you can leverage, build, and deploy custom AI solutions tailored to your data, your policies, your goals, and your mission.

Built on our very own trusted hyperscale data centre, our platform features a robust trust layer to guard the privacy of your data, promote unbiased, accurate results, and ensure compliance.

Watch the demo today to learn how Salesforce AI can help you build trusted, transparent AI solutions that keep you in full control and scale with your needs.