As multinationals continue their accelerated rate of AI adoption, due to their scaling capabilities, they are gaining substantial efficiency, competitiveness, and reach in the process.

Yet, the growing trend toward countries controlling their own AI infrastructure, models, and data — a concept known as “sovereign AI” — may launch new competitive dynamics with the emergence of more regionally-targeted AI innovation.

Every country needs sovereign AI. It codifies your culture, your society’s intelligence, your common sense, your history — you own your own data. – Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA

Governments globally are increasingly seeking AI that they control and is attuned to their national context, culture, and language, rather than reflecting those of other regions and countries.

Balancing between scale, control, and regulation

AI is spread across a broad supply chain of data, models, applications, and infrastructure, making it vulnerable to threats ranging from outright hacks to tainted data, tampered model weights, and adversarial prompts. These risks, highlighted in a recent report we developed alongside the Coalition for Secure AI, provide another strong argument for the need for secure AI and for the surge in sovereign AI.

With more governments adopting a sovereign AI approach, global businesses will need to adapt to a complex new landscape of opportunities and challenges that will reshape how they operate, compete, and expand with artificial intelligence.

This dynamic is leading to a renewed focus on secure AI deployments that offer more control to tailor and customize solutions at the regional and industry level:

Controlled AI deployments: With Cohere, organizations and governments can opt for AI models and infrastructure that they can manage on-premises or within tightly governed cloud environments to address security and compliance needs, particularly by leveraging ISO standards and aligning with global regulations.
Customization for region and industry: New AI platforms, like North, support granular controls, allowing organizations and governments to refine models with local data, adapt to specific legal requirements (such as the EU AI Act or sector-specific mandates), and infuse business logic relevant to particular industries (e.g., finance, healthcare, or public sector). This ensures that solutions are not only secure, but also contextually effective.
Multilingual and multicultural AI: At Cohere, a multicultural, multilingual approach to AI development is built into our DNA. Our models support 23 key languages for business, including French, Arabic, and Chinese. Plus, the open-source Aya model, developed by our research lab, allows developers to build AI applications in over 100 languages, helping to bridge the global digital divide and support a broader spectrum of languages.
Balanced performance and efficiency: Cohere solutions combine robust AI security and governance with high levels of efficiency and modularity. Strong performance does not have to be sacrificed for security or customization.

Build strong partnerships for high-performing AI

As these trends develop, strong cooperative and strategic partnerships with secure AI providers will be more vital than ever.

Cohere is working closely with leading organizations and governments, including the U.K. and Canada, to implement secure AI solutions and research that is closely attuned to their unique industries and national, cultural, and linguistic requirements. And as part of our commitments to responsibly develop safe and secure AI technologies, we have announced our intention to sign the EU AI Act Code of Practice for General Purpose AI Models.

In Japan, we have partnered with Fujitsu to build a custom, state-of-the-art Japanese-language model called Takane. In South Korea, our partnership with LG includes building custom models with Korean language capabilities that can be seamlessly integrated with our secure AI agents platform, North.

Our workshops with Cohere are essentially an acceleration for us to be at the forefront of generative AI-based technology. – Nicholas Lee, CEO, Fujitsu Intelligence

Privately deployed solutions like these give our public and business partners the power to design highly secure AI solutions for their specific needs and goals, all under their control.

In this rapidly shifting AI ecosystem, choosing the right partners can foster faster adoption and innovation in artificial intelligence.

Get started with North today.

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Navigating the global push for sovereign AI