Sovereign AI.

Sovereign AI describes a nation's ability to develop, deploy and govern artificial intelligence under its own control — rather than depending entirely on technology and infrastructure owned or operated from abroad. It spans the full stack: domestic compute capacity and data centres, national data resources, home-grown models and applications, and the talent and institutions that sustain them.

The term is not limited to government-built systems. Most sovereign AI strategies combine public investment with private companies, universities and critical-infrastructure operators, coordinated around a national interest: that essential services, sensitive data and defence capabilities continue to work regardless of decisions taken elsewhere.

Energy grids, hospitals, transport, banking and public administration now run on software that increasingly reasons for itself. When that capability is concentrated in a handful of foreign providers, availability, pricing and data protection become matters of state as much as of procurement.

Sovereign AI is the response: building or securing the compute, data and models that a country's essential systems rely on, so that continuity does not rest on another jurisdiction's export rules or board decisions. For Europe and Switzerland, with their strong research base and industrial core, this is as much an economic question as a security one.

Defence is where the stakes are clearest. Modern capabilities — logistics, intelligence analysis, autonomous systems, command and control — depend on AI that is dependable, auditable and immune to external pressure. Militaries and security services therefore increasingly procure AI with strict requirements on data residency, certification and control.

These mandates create a distinct market: long procurement cycles, high reliability thresholds and contracts awarded to providers who can prove sovereignty end to end. For companies and investors, defence-related sovereign AI has become one of the most consequential and least publicly discussed areas of the field.

Davos Catalyst is convened around four themes: AI infrastructure, enterprise AI, sovereign and defence AI, and AI and capital. Within the programme, sovereign and defence AI is addressed where it is decided in practice — in closed rooms among the investors, operators, decision-makers and researchers who build, fund and procure national AI capability.

The summit takes place from 12 to 15 January 2027 in Davos, Switzerland, in the week before the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. It is an independent, privately hosted event and is not affiliated with the World Economic Forum. Participation is by invitation or application only.