Specifically designed to enable organizations to deploy their own secure, compliant, and automated environments for sovereign AI-ready workloads.
IBM announced today that IBM Sovereign Core, the industry's first sovereign-capable, AI-powered software, designed to enable businesses, governments, and service providers to build, deploy, and manage AI-ready sovereign environments.
Organizations worldwide face a growing need to exert control over their technology infrastructure. Driven by evolving regulatory requirements and the need for auditable governance, businesses and governments are seeking self-managed environments to maintain full operational authority – especially as they deploy AI workloads, broadening the focus with the theme of sovereignty.
Digital sovereignty goes beyond data residency. It encompasses who operates and controls the technological environment, how data is accessed and governed, where workloads are executed, and under what jurisdiction AI models run. However, most organizations lack a destination for migrating, modernizing, and re-hosting applications under sovereign control, including those that will incorporate AI capabilities and have continuous compliance reporting capabilities.
According to Gartner®, more than 75% of companies will have a digital sovereignty strategy by 2030, often based on cloud sovereignty.
“Companies are facing increasing pressure to innovate while meeting increasingly stringent regulatory requirements and recognizing the importance of controlling how sensitive data and AI workloads are accessed and operated,” said Priya Srinivasan, General Manager of Software Products at IBM. “This shift is creating an urgent need for sovereign solutions that deliver AI-ready environments. With IBM Sovereign Core, we are helping clients move forward quickly and confidently – combining compliance and operational autonomy to meet the demands of the AI era without sacrificing sovereignty requirements.”
Sovereignty as the Foundation of Software
IBM Sovereign Core will help customers achieve verifiable sovereignty and full operational control. It is software specifically designed to build, deploy, and manage cloud-native and AI workloads under the organization's own authority, within chosen jurisdictions, based on the Red Hat open source foundation. Unlike approaches that add layers of sovereignty control on top of existing architectures, Sovereign Core makes sovereignty an inherent property of the software itself.
Organizations can obtain:
- Identity and keys within the jurisdiction: All authentication, authorization, encryption keys, and access management remain within the jurisdictional boundaries under the client's control.
- Continuous compliance and automated evidence: Comprehensive operational data, system telemetry, and audit trails are generated, stored, and managed within the sovereign boundary, including automated identity.
- Governed AI inference: Deployment and hosting of AI models, local GPU clusters, local inference execution, and agent operations occur under local governance, with traceability and oversight, without exporting data to external providers.
- Ease of implementation: Delivering sovereignty at scale with consistency and flexibility, allowing organizations to configure isolated environments with built-in multitenancy capabilities in just a few days, with freedom of choice in hardware and infrastructure.
“The conversation about sovereign AI has focused on data residency, but that’s only part of the equation,” said Sanjeev Mohan, principal at SanjMo. “IBM Sovereign Core addresses the more complex question: who controls the system, and can you prove that to regulators? IBM takes a holistic approach that encompasses data, operations, technology, and assurance, with continuous monitoring. As AI goes into production, this kind of ongoing accountability becomes non-negotiable.”
“AI is accelerating the pace at which sovereignty issues move from theory to daily operations,” said Erik Fish, Director of Geotechnology at Eurasia Group. “As geopolitics, regulation, and data governance increasingly converge, governments and businesses need to act by demonstrating clear control over critical data and infrastructure. The challenge has shifted from a choice between openness and sovereignty to governing data, access, and infrastructure amidst increasing regulatory and geopolitical constraints.”
Operational Independence Through Choice of Environment
Customers can deploy IBM Sovereign Core in the environment of their choice – whether in on-premises data centers, supported regional cloud infrastructure, or through IT service providers. IBM is collaborating with IT service providers globally, beginning with an initial launch in Europe with Cegeka in Belgium and the Netherlands and Computacenter in Germany. These partnerships enable local operational independence and compliance management, while empowering IT service providers to offer differentiated sovereign services to enterprises preparing for AI-scale workloads.
“As organizations face increasingly complex regulatory and compliance requirements, we see strong demand for digital platforms and software that allow sensitive data to remain within controlled boundaries and in compliance,” said Gaetan Willems, Vice President of Cloud & Digital Platforms at Cegeka. “Partnering with IBM to offer a pre-architectural solution in our on-premises environment allows us to deliver enterprise-ready software while they meet local compliance standards.”
“With IBM Sovereign Core, we can configure the software for each customer’s specific use cases, instead of spending months putting together disparate components and validating sovereignty controls,” said Christian Schreiner, director of the Cloud Unit at Computacenter. “This can significantly accelerate our time-to-value and allow us to help customers who previously didn’t even consider AI solutions.”
Availability of IBM Sovereign Core
Starting in February, IBM Sovereign Core will be available in a tech preview version, with full general availability expected by mid-2026.
In the general availability (GA) phase, additional features will be introduced.
To learn more about IBM Sovereign Core, read our blog. on here and participate virtually in the IBM Tech Summit on January 27th. To join the waiting list for the IBM Sovereign Core Tech Preview, visit [website address]. on here.
