IBM Sovereign Core is AI-ready sovereign-by-design software** **that enables enterprises, governments and service providers to deploy and operate AI-ready environments quickly and at scale—extending existing infrastructure and platform investments, with full control over data, operations and governance.

The way forward: Sovereignty as a system property

For years, digital sovereignty discussions focused primarily on data residency. AI has fundamentally changed that model. Modern AI systems operate continuously at runtime, depend on sensitive data and models, and introduce new regulatory obligations around accountability, auditability and governance.

As a result, sovereignty today extends beyond where data lives to include:

• Who operates the platform and under which authority
• Where AI models run and how inference is governed
• Who has administrative access and how it is enforced
• How compliance can be demonstrated continuously, not just documented

A fundamental architectural shift is required: one where sovereignty is an inherent property of the platform itself, not a contractual promise or deployment variant. It must deliver:

1. **Customer-operated control planes: **Organizations maintain direct operational authority over platform management, deployment decisions and system configurations without vendor intermediation.
2. **In-boundary identity and keys: **All authentication, authorization, encryption keys and access management remain within jurisdictional boundaries under customer control.
3. **Local logs and telemetry: **Comprehensive operational data, system telemetry and audit trails are generated, stored, and managed entirely within the sovereign boundary.1
4. **Governed AI inference: **AI model deployment, inference execution and agent operations occur under local governance with full traceability and oversight.

Introducing IBM Sovereign Core: A fundamentally different approach

A fundamentally different approach to how sovereignty is implemented, managed and proven, we built IBM Sovereign Core focused on three foundational principles that shape the software end to end:

1. Sovereignty is a platform capability and it must be provable

With IBM Sovereign Core, sovereignty is enforced architecturally, not contractually. Control does not rely on policy overlays or provider-managed control planes, but on automated always-on controls and user-owned control planes. Built on open and transparent technologies Red Hat OpenShift, with air-gapped software that operates like SaaS but is fully under the company and local authority. Identity, encryption keys, logs, telemetry and audit evidence remain entirely within the sovereign boundary. Ongoing compliance capabilities are embedded directly into the software, enabling organizations to produce regulator-ready proof on demand, without manual, audit-driven processes.

2. AI sovereignty is a first-class system property

Within the sovereign boundary, organizations can deploy CPU- and GPU-based clusters, bring approved open or proprietary models, and govern access to models, tools and knowledge sources through controlled gateways. AI inference and agent-based applications run locally, without exporting data or telemetry to external providers. Just as importantly, IBM Sovereign Core enforces sovereignty at runtime, not only at configuration time. Identity, access, model usage and operational activity are continuously monitored and recorded, creating a clear audit trail for AI systems operating in high-impact and regulated domains.

3. Sovereignty is operationalized for speed and scale

IBM Sovereign Core delivers a customer-operated control plane that can be deployed rapidly and operated consistently at scale, allowing localized central teams to operate thousands of cores and hundreds of nodes with different sovereign requirements and controls from a single unique control plane. Automated configuration of identity, security, and compliance is built in from the outset, while self-service provisioning for CPU, GPU, VM and AI inference environments enables repeatable deployment across enterprise-run and partner-operated multi-tenant models, without sacrificing control.

Built on open, enterprise-grade technologies such as Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Sovereign Core enables organizations to extend existing investments across infrastructure, platforms and operational tooling—whether on-premises, in-region cloud or partner-operated environments. Sovereignty is established without resetting the technology foundation or requiring greenfield rebuilds.

The architecture of IBM Sovereign Core

Sovereignty is an inherent property of the architecture itself, providing hardware and infrastructure flexibility:

Figure 1: IBM Sovereign Core Architecture Overview

Through IBM Sovereign Core’s architecture, customers will experience:

1. Portal: Provides the Control Plane user experience.
2. Hardware Optionality: Infrastructure abstraction and hardware flexibility using OpenShift and OpenShift Virtualization.
3. Operations and Orchestration: Delivers automated coordination of platform workflows.
4. Compliance Center: Provides governance, risk management and compliance capabilities for the platform.
5. Catalog: A curated collection of atomic accelerators that enable application owners to deploy and operate traditional and AI applications.

Figure 2: IBM Sovereign Core Architecture: Fully opinionated, detailed view. A logical single pane of glass solution providing flexibility, consistency and security to host and manage traditional and AI applications

What does this mean for organizations?

IBM Sovereign Core turns sovereignty into an operational capability. By embedding control, provability and AI governance directly into the software, it enables organizations to operate AI environments that balance technological advancement with demonstrable authority over their systems.

Through IBM Sovereign Core, organizations will experience real-world benefits:

• Operate under sovereign authority: Operational control is transferred to the organization or sovereign operator; not extended from outside the boundary.****
• Demonstrate compliance and sovereignty through operation. This enables organizations to demonstrate both sovereignty and compliance posture on demand, using operational evidence rather than relying on periodic audits, static attestations or manual reporting.
• Run AI entirely in-boundary, with governance at runtime. AI sovereignty is enforced at runtime, governing where inference happens, who controls models, and how decisions are logged, traced and reviewed.****
• Move with cloud-like agility, without losing control. By reducing bespoke engineering and ongoing operational overhead, IBM Sovereign Core enables organizations to operate sovereign environments for sensitive or AI workloads.****
• Preserve long-term independence. Designed for replaceability and hybrid operation, IBM Sovereign Core establishes sovereignty as a foundation for long-term choice, portability and architectural independence—allowing organizations to continue leveraging existing infrastructure and platform investments while retaining full operational authority over sovereign environments.****
• Deploy with flexibility: Run the platform with direct operational authority, or work with trusted local service providers to operate the environment. IT service providers can use IBM Sovereign Core as a standardized foundation for delivering sovereign cloud and AI services at scale.
• Extend existing investments: Leverage existing infrastructure, platforms and operational tooling across on-premises, in-region cloud or partner-operated environments.

Putting sovereign operations to work

Starting in February, IBM Sovereign Core will be available in tech preview, with full general availability planned for mid-year 2026. Learn how IBM Sovereign Core helps organizations achieve verifiable sovereignty and operation control in our next IBM Technology Summit on 27 January 2026.

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Footnotes

1 A sovereign boundary is the enforceable perimeter where data, AI, and platform operations are fully controlled, governed and auditable under a single jurisdiction—without reliance on external control planes or foreign legal authority.