Summary: New capabilities help enterprises, governments, and IT service providers achieve digital sovereignty in hybrid environments, ensuring continuous compliance and full control.
BeijingMay 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — At the Think 2026 conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced the general availability of IBM Sovereign Core. This is a new software platform designed to help organizations build and operate sovereign environments for artificial intelligence while verifying their control over the system, providing end-to-end digital sovereignty solutions for enterprises and governments.
IBM Launches IBM Sovereign Core to Enable Digital Sovereignty
With the proliferation of artificial intelligence, “Digital Sovereignty” has become a critical requirement, extending beyond data residency to encompass full control over infrastructure, operations, and AI systems. Organizations must navigate rigorous scrutiny from regulators, auditors, and boards while balancing the need for necessary control with accelerating innovation. However, most existing platforms struggle to provide a consistent and auditable solution for these requirements, leading to a disconnect between policy and actual execution.
Dinesh Nirmal, Senior Vice President of Software at IBM, stated: “Artificial intelligence has elevated ‘sovereignty’ from a policy statement to a runtime requirement. With IBM Sovereign Core, enterprises no longer have to choose between rapidly deploying AI and verifying control. Sovereignty should not be a barrier to innovation—with the right software foundation, it can actually drive innovation.”
Defining Digital Sovereignty in the Age of AI
IBM defines “Digital Sovereignty” across four dimensions:
- Operational Sovereignty – Control over how the environment operates
- Data Sovereignty – Control over data at rest, in use, and in transit
- Technical Sovereignty – Adoption of open, modular architectures to avoid vendor lock-in
- AI Sovereignty – Control over where models are deployed and how inference is conducted
These four dimensions together form the foundation of IBM’s unified approach to digital sovereignty—ensuring comprehensive control across operations, data, technology, and AI.
A Unified Approach to Digital Sovereignty
IBM Sovereign Core introduces a new operational sovereignty model, embedding governance, compliance, and control from the system’s initial design, enabling organizations to scale AI while maintaining sovereignty, trust, and operational independence. The platform provides an integrated sovereign software platform that unifies control plane, identity management, security, compliance, and AI execution capabilities within a single deployment model.
Key features include:
- Customer-Controlled Control Plane: Control over configuration, operations, and lifecycle management
- In-Boundary Identity, Encryption, and Data Services: Ensures all access rights, sensitive information, keys, logs, and audit evidence remain under customer control
- Continuous Compliance Monitoring and Evidence Generation: Enables real-time audit readiness
- Pre-Built Regulatory Frameworks: Accelerates compliance strategies for different regions and industries
- Controlled AI Execution: Ensures models, inference, and intelligent agent operations run within defined sovereign boundaries
- Open Modular Architecture: Based on open standards, supports portability, and avoids vendor lock-in
These capabilities collectively form a sovereign control plane, enabling organizations to both run the environment and verify their control over data, operations, and AI.
Continuous, Verifiable Compliance
IBM Sovereign Core helps organizations transition from a static compliance model to a dynamic, continuous, and verifiable one. Through integrated monitoring, drift detection, and automated evidence generation, organizations can:
- Verify compliance status in real-time
- Preserve audit-ready evidence within sovereign boundaries
- Reduce reliance on manual reviews and point-in-time audits
This ensures that “sovereignty” is not only definable but also observable, enforceable, and provable at scale.
AI Governance Within Sovereign Boundaries
As AI systems become increasingly integral to enterprise operations, governance must extend from data to models, inference, and intelligent agent behavior. IBM Sovereign Core enables organizations to deploy and run AI models, intelligent agents, and inference workloads entirely within sovereign boundaries, achieving:
- Control over where AI processing occurs
- Traceability of model execution and decision-making
- Management of access rights, updates, and lifecycle
This allows AI systems to operate with accountability, transparency, and control, even in highly regulated environments.
Scalable Ecosystem and Flexible Deployment
Built on open enterprise technologies like Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI, IBM Sovereign Core supports organizations in extending existing investments to hybrid and partner environments.
It includes a scalable catalog that organizations can customize for their own users and applications, or expand through pre-vetted IBM, third-party, and open-source software and services from a partner ecosystem including: AMD, ATOS, Cegeka, Cloudera, Dell, Elastic, HCL, Intel, Mistral, MongoDB, and Palo Alto Networks.
The platform supports deploying CPU, GPU, and AI inference environments using standardized templates and automated configurations, enabling teams to consistently deploy and manage workloads across sovereign zones while maintaining alignment with compliance and sovereignty requirements.
Designed for Regulated Regions, Enterprises, and Governments
IBM Sovereign Core is designed for organizations requiring greater control, flexibility, and compliance for sensitive workloads:
- Enterprises: Run regulated applications and AI workloads in controlled environments
- Governments and Public Sector: Support sovereign operations for critical services
- Service Providers and Regional Cloud Operators: Deliver sovereign cloud and AI services at scale
In these scenarios, IBM Sovereign Core enables organizations to innovate with AI while maintaining provable control over systems, data, and operations. The product is now generally available.
Partner Testimonials
Marjorie Janiewicz, Chief Revenue Officer at Mistral AI, stated: “Control and compliance have always been barriers to enterprise AI adoption. IBM Sovereign Core provides a ready-to-deploy infrastructure that allows our models to operate within trusted boundaries from day one, helping organizations accelerate AI adoption while maintaining full control over their data. We are honored to be the first model provider partner for Sovereign Core, certifying our cutting-edge models and supporting global enterprise customers.”
Philip Guido, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at AMD, stated: “AI is reshaping how nations, governments, and enterprises operate, elevating digital sovereignty from a policy issue to a leadership priority. As AI is deployed at scale, control over technology becomes critical. We are collaborating with IBM and Red Hat to help customers achieve greater sovereignty and flexibility across the entire IT stack through an open, secure, and transparent approach.”
Gaetan Willems, Vice President of Cloud and Digital Platforms at Cegeka, stated: “Faced with increasing compliance and regulatory complexity, there is strong market demand for digital platforms and software that can keep sensitive data within controlled, compliant boundaries. By partnering with IBM, we leverage localized environments to provide pre-architected solutions that help customers meet local compliance standards.”
Vinay Prabhakar, Chief Commercial Officer for Deloitte Asia Pacific and National Sales & Alliance Leader for Deloitte South Asia, stated: “As part of our strategic alliance with IBM, Deloitte is committed to leveraging the Sovereign Core technology stack to support clients in building secure, scalable, and compliant cloud ecosystems. We combine IBM’s platform capabilities with Deloitte’s deep experience in regulation and transformation to help enterprises address key issues such as data localization, security, compliance, and India’s DPDP Act.”
AS Rajgopal, Managing Director and CEO of NxtGen, stated: “India deserves indigenously designed cloud infrastructure. This has always been our operating principle at NxtGen: superior performance, lower total cost of ownership, and zero compromise on compliance. The IBM Sovereign Core collaboration is a direct embodiment of this commitment, bringing secure and compliant cloud capabilities to India’s regulatory environment.”
Bill Pearson, Vice President of Data Center and AI Software at Intel, stated: “In AI applications, establishing and proving control over data, models, and operations is rapidly becoming a key differentiator for trust, resilience, and innovation. Building a sovereign AI framework that encompasses open hybrid architectures and transparent governance requires a foundation built for performance, security, and control. Intel continues to innovate with technologies like Xeon 6 processors and TDX to protect data and AI workloads across CPU and GPU environments, supporting sovereign infrastructure initiatives like IBM Sovereign Core.”