IBM unveils Sovereign Core to help organisations run AI under local control
The new software stack is designed to give governments and enterprises direct control over infrastructure, data and governance as digital sovereignty becomes a regulatory priority.
IBM has announced Sovereign Core, a new software offering aimed at helping governments and service providers create AI-ready environments that remain under their own operational control.
The company said organisations face increasing pressure to control where data, identities and workloads reside, driven by tightening regulation and the need for auditable governance. It cited Gartner forecasts that more than 75% of enterprises will have a digital sovereignty strategy by 2030.
Sovereign Core is built on an open-source foundation from Red Hat and is designed to make sovereignty an inherent property of the software rather than an added layer. In practice, this means customers can operate their own control plane, keep identity systems and encryption keys within national or organisational boundaries, and generate continuous evidence of compliance for regulators and auditors.
IBM said the platform also allows customers to host artificial intelligence inference workloads under local governance rules, rather than sending data to external hyperscale clouds, and to deploy isolated, multi-tenant environments at scale. These features are intended to support regulated sectors such as government, healthcare, finance and critical infrastructure, where data residency and control are central concerns.
The company said Sovereign Core can be run on-premises, in supported in-region cloud infrastructure, or through approved IT service providers. Initial partners include Cegeka in Belgium and the Netherlands and Computacenter in Germany.
“Partnering with IBM to offer a pre-architected solution through our in-country environment enables us to deliver enterprise-ready software to our clients, while allowing them to address local compliance standards,” said Gaetan Willems, vice president of cloud and digital platforms at Cegeka.
Christian Schreiner, unit director of cloud at Computacenter, said the approach reduces complexity for customers. “With IBM Sovereign Core, we can focus on configuring the software to each client’s specific use cases rather than spending months piecing together disparate components and validating sovereignty controls,” he said.
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IBM positioned Sovereign Core as part of a broader push to align AI deployment with national laws, sector regulations and organisational policies, particularly as governments scrutinise how and where AI systems are trained, deployed and operated.
The company said Sovereign Core will be available in technology preview starting in February, with full general availability planned for mid-2026. IBM added that timelines and plans are subject to change and that additional information, including registration for a technology summit scheduled for 27 January, is available via its website.
The Recap
- IBM launches Sovereign Core to build AI-ready sovereign environments.
- Tech preview starts in February; general availability planned mid-year 2026.
- Partners include Cegeka and Computacenter for in-region operational independence.
