Security & Compliance

Sovereign AI in Europe: Your Deployment Options Compared

Name: Plainsight AI Assistant
Brand: Plainsight

Public cloud, European-sovereign cloud, fully isolated on-premises, or air-gapped. What each option actually buys you, and how to choose.

Sovereignty is not one decision. It is three.

"Sovereign AI" is one of the most overloaded phrases in the market right now. Different vendors mean different things by it and most pitches gloss over the parts that matter to compliance teams.

Sovereignty for an AI platform comes down to three separate questions. You can answer them independently, and the right combination depends on your regulatory regime, your existing infrastructure, and how fast you need to move.

The three dimensions of AI sovereignty

Where the platform runs

The infrastructure that hosts the assistant itself. Public cloud in your region, a European-sovereign cloud, your own data centre, or fully isolated. Each option has a different operational profile and a different sovereignty story.

Where the model runs

A cloud-hosted commercial model in the same region, a regional inference endpoint from a European provider, or an open-source model running entirely inside your environment. Sometimes the model decision and the platform decision are linked. Often they are independent.

Who has audit and access rights

Whose support staff can theoretically reach the system, under what conditions, and with what logging. This is the sovereignty dimension that compliance and legal care about most, and the one most vendor pages skip over.

Four deployment options compared

All four are supported. Most customers start at one end and have the option to migrate later as their constraints evolve.

Option	Data residency	Model choice	Ops effort	Time to deploy
Public cloud, EU region	EU region	Broadest	Lowest	Days
European-sovereign cloud	EU only, EU operator	Curated regional + open-source	Low	Weeks
On-premises in your data centre	Your data centre	Self-hosted open-source primarily	Higher	Weeks to months
Air-gapped / isolated	Fully isolated	Self-hosted open-source only	Highest	Months

Public cloud, EU region: Most mid-market organisations starting out.

European-sovereign cloud: Regulated sectors with sovereignty mandate.

On-premises in your data centre: Existing on-prem footprint, strict residency.

Air-gapped / isolated: Defence, critical infrastructure, classified.

How to choose, in four sentences

A short decision tree. Useful as a starting point. The exact fit depends on the size and complexity of your organisation, and we usually work it out together in the first call.

If your data residency rules say "EU only", any of the four works. Public cloud in an EU region is usually fastest.

If your rules say "EU operator only", you are choosing between European-sovereign cloud and on-premises.

If your rules say "must not leave our network", you are on-premises or air-gapped.

If you need to start in 30 days, public cloud is the only option that fits the calendar. The others can come later.

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