IBM has announced the launch of IBM Sovereign Core, a new software platform designed to help enterprises, governments, and service providers build, deploy, and manage AI-ready environments with an emphasis on digital sovereignty. The company states that this is the first AI-ready sovereign-enabled software of its kind.
The need for digital sovereignty is increasing as organizations face more regulatory requirements and seek greater control over their technology infrastructure. This includes maintaining authority over data access, governance, workload execution locations, and jurisdictional oversight of AI models. According to Gartner, it is expected that by 2030 more than 75% of enterprises will have a digital sovereignty strategy in place.
Priya Srinivasan, General Manager of IBM Software Products, said: “Businesses are facing growing pressure to innovate while meeting tightening regulatory requirements and recognizing the importance of controlling how sensitive data and AI workloads are accessed and operated. This shift is creating an urgent need for sovereign solutions that deliver AI-ready environments. With IBM Sovereign Core, we are helping clients move faster and with confidence— combining openness, compliance, and operational autonomy to meet the demands of the AI era, without the need to sacrifice sovereignty requirements.”
IBM describes Sovereign Core as purpose-built software that enables customers to achieve verifiable sovereignty and full operational control over cloud-native and AI workloads within chosen jurisdictions. It is built on Red Hat’s open source foundation. Features include customer-operated control planes (giving organizations direct authority over operations), in-boundary identity management (keeping authentication processes within jurisdictional boundaries), ongoing compliance reporting with audit trails stored locally, governed AI inference under local oversight without exporting data externally, and rapid deployment capabilities.
Sanjeev Mohan from SanjMo commented: “The sovereign AI conversation has focused on data residency, but that’s only part of the equation. IBM Sovereign Core addresses the harder question: who controls the system and can you prove it to regulators? IBM takes a holistic approach spanning data, operations, technology, and assurance, with continuous monitoring. As AI moves into production, that kind of ongoing accountability becomes non-negotiable.”
Erik Fish from Eurasia Group added: “AI is accelerating the pace at which sovereignty questions move from theory to daily operations. As geopolitics, regulation, and data governance increasingly converge, governments and enterprises must move while demonstrating clear control over critical data and infrastructure. The challenge is no longer a trade-off between openness and sovereignty but governing data access and infrastructure amid growing regulatory and geopolitical constraints.”
Customers will be able to deploy IBM Sovereign Core in various environments including on-premises data centers or supported regional cloud infrastructures through IT Service Providers. Initial collaborations include Cegeka in Belgium/the Netherlands and Computacenter in Germany.
Gaetan Willems from Cegeka stated: “As organizations 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. 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.”
Christian Schreiner from Computacenter said: “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 validating sovereignty controls. It can significantly accelerate our time-to-value let us help clients who previously couldn’t consider AI solutions at all.”
IBM plans a tech preview release for Sovereign Core starting in February 2026 with general availability scheduled for mid-year 2026.
More information about IBM Sovereign Core can be found on their blog or by joining their virtual Tech Summit event on January 27.
###
