SAP is pushing forward a unified strategy designed to strengthen Europe’s digital autonomy. At the center of this vision is the new EU AI Cloud, an architecture aimed at giving European organisations more flexibility and control over how they deploy AI and cloud workloads—whether in SAP’s own data centres, with local European providers, or fully on-premise.
This strategy reflects a growing priority among enterprises and governments: adopting advanced AI tools without compromising sovereignty, compliance, or regional security standards.
A Push to Expand AI Sovereignty
A major piece of SAP’s effort is its collaboration with Cohere. Through Cohere North, SAP plans to bring new agent-style and multimodal AI models directly into the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This setup empowers industries with strict data residency rules—such as government, healthcare, and finance—to build AI systems that never leave European borders.
SAP’s model ecosystem doesn’t stop there. Tools and applications from providers including Cohere, Mistral AI, and OpenAI are all integrated within SAP BTP, allowing organisations to select the AI capabilities they need while maintaining full transparency around performance and data stewardship.
Designed for Strict Compliance and Regional Control
The key advantage of the EU AI Cloud lies in deployment flexibility. Everything runs within SAP’s Sovereign Cloud framework, which isolates operations from US hyperscalers and ensures data is processed in European-based environments.
SAP offers several deployment paths:
SAP Sovereign Cloud on SAP Cloud Infrastructure (EU)
This option relies on SAP-operated European data centres using open-source foundations. All data remains within EU jurisdiction—ideal for organisations prioritizing regulatory alignment.
SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site
For organisations needing maximum control, SAP manages the cloud stack while hosting the infrastructure directly in the customer’s chosen data centre. This provides the highest assurance for compliance, operations, and legal oversight.
Select hyperscalers (market-dependent)
Customers who continue using commercial SaaS via global cloud providers can layer on sovereignty features depending on local requirements.
Delos Cloud
A specialised sovereign cloud service for Germany’s public sector, built to meet strict government-level standards.
A Framework Built for Choice — and for Europe’s Future in AI
The EU AI Cloud is crafted to support organisations with varying levels of risk tolerance, compliance needs, and infrastructure maturity. Whether an enterprise wants full on-premise control or a flexible hybrid setup, the architecture is designed around autonomy and alignment with European security principles.
By combining sovereign cloud infrastructure with a diverse ecosystem of AI models and services, SAP’s approach moves Europe closer to operating advanced AI systems on its own terms—without sacrificing innovation, scalability, or performance.
