Cohere CEO on G7 leaders’ choice: sovereign AI or digital serfdom

Dependence on a handful of centralized AI providers is the digital equivalent of relying on a single nation for oil.

The sudden restriction of access to Anthropic’s models exposes a reality many global leaders have chosen to ignore. We are in the early stages of an AI industrial revolution, yet nations remain dangerously dependent on a handful of big tech companies. Digital sovereignty goes far beyond market competition. It is fundamentally about who controls the technology that will shape our economic security and national autonomy for decades. 

This week, I joined global leaders and executives at the G7 summit to discuss the best way forward for artificial intelligence. My goal was to leave them with one clear message: The world can no longer afford the strategic risk of renting its future from centralized providers. Renting artificial intelligence means surrendering operational control. You give up your data privacy, your security protocols, and your basic access, leaving yourself entirely at the mercy of a third party. 

In the industrial era, democracies understood the immense danger of relying on a single source for energy or a narrow geographic choke point for critical minerals. Today, we are on the verge of repeating that exact mistake with digital intelligence. 

Autocratic nations are already leveraging heavily subsidized, state-influenced models to export an architecture of centralized influence. The alternative for the rest of the world cannot simply be a different form of dependency on a few centralized black boxes that decide when to provide or revoke access. A monopoly of intelligence is inherently brittle. When a handful of centralized entities control the primary models of the world, they control the parameters of global commerce, security, and thought. A single corporate policy change or geopolitical shift can instantly sever access to vital systems. 

We have to cultivate a competitive ecosystem where choice and control is guaranteed, allowing nations to rely on diverse providers while maintaining their distinct values, languages, and laws. This philosophy of distributed, open capability is exactly why we built Cohere. We provide models that enterprises and governments can take full custody of and deploy inside their own secure environments. The tech alliance pioneered by Canada and Germany is a practical blueprint here. It proves nations can access cutting-edge capability without trading away their self-determination.

But this challenge is much bigger than any one company. 

Digital sovereignty is quickly becoming a defining pursuit for countries trying to build strategic autonomy. Yet in our work with governments and critical industries, I see the same troubling pattern. Sovereignty is frequently treated as branding and marketing rather than a structural reality. To build a genuinely resilient ecosystem, leaders have to look past the marketing labels and apply three practical tests to determine their actual level of autonomy. 

First, control over the quality and governance of the model itself. Many AI systems are trained on broad global data and updated on a schedule determined entirely by the provider. This means models may become misaligned with the values of your nation, may amplify misinformation, or simply perform poorly in your language. A sovereign approach requires nations’ and organizations’ to tailor models to their unique needs and to decide how and when updates occur. 

Second is control over your data. Storing information inside a regional data center is not a sovereign guarantee. Data sovereignty is achieved when the infrastructure is located within the nation, and crucially, there is no 3rd party access control to the software or hardware powering critical systems. This means that these systems are accessed, updated, and controlled by authorized personnel; and importantly, the ability for companies to remotely access the systems is fully restricted. 

Lastly, is maintaining autonomy. If a provider retains practical control over systems due to a dependence on a 3rd party service they control, then no amount of local hosting delivers sovereignty. The customer must be able to run the same system in different cloud or on premise environments, and have the ability to retain full operational continuity if those 3rd party services are shut down. 

True digital sovereignty is about choice and control. It is the ability to decide who sees your data, who modifies your systems, and who has the power to turn them off. Owning your AI means owning your future. 

The G7 has a brief window to set a global standard for digital resilience. By prioritizing advanced research, supporting open environments, and choosing flexibility across the supply chain, we can ensure our nations remain the architects of their own destiny.

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