To this end, governments worldwide have begun articulating national AI strategies that increasingly place AI sovereignty at their core. By 2028, Gartner predicts that 65% of governments worldwide will have adopted some form of AI sovereignty to limit dependency on external parties. This marks a notable departure from an earlier mindset in AI adoption, which largely viewed it through a Software as a Service (SaaS) lens, emphasising convenience and cost-effectiveness. Today, the focus instead lies on safeguarding national interests and ensuring that critical AI capabilities can be developed and governed domestically — on concerns of AI sovereignty.
Today, the question is no longer whether artificial intelligence (AI) will be adopted. Like electricity or the internet, its diffusion is all but inevitable. Even in its formative stage, AI is already reshaping modern life: disrupting industries, challenging existing economic and social structures, and redrawing the boundaries of technology. What is at stake now is who controls these systems, and how the power of this transformative technology is governed and directed.
The need for countries to assert greater control over their digital infrastructure has become more pressing as global divisions deepen. According to a 2024 Accenture study, more than 90% of leading AI models originated in either the US or China. The concentration of advanced AI capabilities in just a handful of countries makes over-reliance on foreign technologies a strategic risk.
