Singapore – IBM has introduced IBM Sovereign Core, a new software offering designed to support enterprises, public sector bodies and service providers in building and operating AI-ready environments under sovereign control.
The launch reflects growing global demand for greater oversight of technology infrastructure as organisations respond to tightening regulatory frameworks, heightened governance expectations and the expanding use of AI.
As digital sovereignty considerations extend beyond data location to include operational control, jurisdictional authority, access governance and AI model execution, many organisations face challenges modernising and relocating applications within environments they fully manage.
This is particularly relevant for AI workloads, which can intensify sovereignty and compliance risks. Industry forecasts indicate that the majority of large organisations are expected to adopt formal digital sovereignty strategies by the end of the decade, underscoring the need for practical and scalable solutions.
“Across ASEAN, organisations are under growing pressure to scale AI while meeting increasingly complex regulatory and data-sovereignty requirements. Businesses need greater control over how sensitive data and AI workloads are accessed and operated,” Catherine Lian, general manager and technology leader at IBM ASEAN, stated.
“With IBM Sovereign Core, clients can advance AI initiatives with confidence, balancing openness and agility with the compliance and operational autonomy required for sovereignty.”
IBM’s software is designed to provide organisations with verifiable operational autonomy by enabling them to build, deploy and manage cloud-native and AI workloads within jurisdictions of their choosing. The software is based on open-source technologies from Red Hat and embeds sovereignty principles directly into the software layer, rather than applying controls as an add-on to existing architectures.
This approach is intended to allow organisations to retain authority over system operations, identity management, encryption keys, compliance evidence and AI inference activities, while maintaining transparency and auditability.
The platform supports customer-operated control over deployment and configuration, ensures that identity services and cryptographic assets remain within defined geographic boundaries, and generates continuous compliance data and audit records within the sovereign environment. It also enables AI models and inference workloads to be hosted and executed locally, supported by in-region infrastructure such as GPU clusters, without transferring data to external providers.
IBM has begun collaborating with service providers in Europe, including Cegeka in Belgium and the Netherlands and Computacenter in Germany, to support early deployments. These partnerships are intended to help organisations meet local regulatory requirements while enabling service providers to deliver sovereign-focused offerings for AI-scale workloads.
“As organisations navigate increasingly complex compliance and regulatory requirements, we’re seeing strong demand for digital platforms and software that allows sensitive data to remain within controlled, compliant boundaries,” Gaetan Willems, VP of cloud & digital platforms at Cegeka, commented.
“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.”
The introduction of IBM Sovereign Core comes as governments and enterprises increasingly seek to balance innovation with regulatory assurance, particularly as AI adoption accelerates.
By enabling demonstrable control over data, infrastructure and operations, the software is positioned to support organisations seeking to advance AI initiatives while maintaining compliance, accountability and jurisdictional oversight in an evolving regulatory and geopolitical landscape.
