In a context marked by constantly evolving regulations and a growing demand for governance and traceability, organizations around the world face increasing pressure to regain direct control over their applications, data and workloads, especially when incorporating AI capabilities that amplify risks around sovereignty.
To fully address this situation, IBM has announced IBM Sovereign Core, the industry’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-ready and sovereign-capable software, designed to enable enterprises, governments and service providers to build, deploy and manage AI-ready environments under their own control.
Strict regulatory requirements
Digital sovereignty goes far beyond simple data residency. It covers who operates and controls the technological environment, how access and information is governed, where workloads run, and under what jurisdiction AI models operate. However, most organizations today lack an environment that allows them to host, modernize, and migrate applications securely and in compliance with these requirements, particularly when it comes to AI-powered workloads. According to Gartner, more than 75% of all companies will have a digital sovereignty strategy by 2030.
“Enterprises are facing increasing pressure to innovate while meeting increasingly stringent regulatory requirements. At the same time, they are increasingly aware of the need to control how sensitive information and AI workloads are accessed and operated,” said Priya Srinivasan, general manager of software products at IBM. “This context is driving urgent demand for sovereign solutions that deliver AI-ready environments. With IBM Sovereign Core, we help clients move faster and more confidently, combining openness, compliance and operational autonomy to respond to the demands of the AI era without giving up any sovereignty requirements.”
Sovereignty as the basis of software
IBM Sovereign Core is software designed specifically to help clients achieve verifiable autonomy and absolute operational control. The tool provides an integrated foundation that allows you, from day one, to create, deploy and manage AI and cloud workloads under your own authority, staying within a single jurisdiction, and built on Red Hat’s open source foundation.
Unlike other approaches that add sovereignty controls to existing architectures, IBM Sovereign Core integrates sovereignty as a feature of the software, while ensuring flexibility in the hardware and infrastructure itself. With this new tool, organizations will have:
• Control plane operated by the client: Organizations maintain direct operational authority over software operations, deployment decisions, and system configurations without vendor intermediation.
• Identity and keys within limits: All authentication, authorization, encryption keys and access management remain within the jurisdiction under the control of the client.
• Guarantee and evidence of continuous compliance: Operational data, system telemetry and audit logs are generated, stored and managed entirely within the sovereign boundary, including automated identity.
• Governed AI inference: AI model deployment and hosting, local GPU clusters, inference execution, and agent operations are performed under local governance with full traceability and oversight.
• Ease of implementation: Sovereignty at scale with consistency and flexibility, enabling isolated environments with multi-user capabilities to be established in a matter of days.
IBM Sovereign Core is the industry’s first sovereign-capable artificial intelligence (AI)-ready software
“The conversation around sovereign AI has focused on data residency, but that is only part of the equation,” said Sanjeev Mohan, principal at SanjMo. “IBM Sovereign Core addresses the toughest question: who controls the system and how it can be demonstrated to regulators. As AI moves toward production, that level of ongoing responsibility becomes non-negotiable.”
Operational independence
IBM is collaborating with IT service providers globally to ensure operational independence and local compliance. “We are seeing strong demand for digital platforms and software that allow sensitive data to remain within controlled boundaries,” said Gaetan Willems, vice president of Digital and Cloud Platforms at Cegeka. “This collaboration allows us to offer our customers software ready for business use and aligned with local regulations.”
“With IBM Sovereign Core, we can focus on configuring the software for each customer’s specific use cases, rather than spending months integrating disparate components,” said Christian Schreiner, director of Computacenter’s Cloud Unit.
IBM Sovereign Core will be available in technical preview beginning in February, allowing customers and partners to evaluate and deploy the platform in real-world environments. General availability is planned for mid-2026, when additional capabilities will be added.
