Open Technologies: The Pillars of Sovereign AI Factories in Europe

The Strategic Imperative of Open Technologies in AI Factories

As Europe positions itself to become a global leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the role of open technologies in building sovereign AI factories cannot be overstated. These digital infrastructures, designed to handle the heavy processing behind AI, are critical for economic growth, scientific progress, and national security. The European Commission's AI Continent Action Plan and the deployment of AI Gigafactories and AI Factories underscore the continent's commitment to leveraging open technologies for a sovereign and secure AI future.

The Vision of Sovereign AI Factories

A sovereign AI factory is a modular, scalable system that supports the entire AI lifecycle—from data preparation and model training to real-time inference at the edge. Sovereignty in this context means that control over algorithms, data, management software, and infrastructure remains with trusted national or regional actors. This is particularly crucial in sectors like public health, defense, financial systems, and smart infrastructure, where regulatory constraints and national interests demand full transparency and autonomy from foreign technology vendors.

The Case for Open Technologies

Clarity and Confidence

Open technologies enable the inspection of the inner workings of each layer in the AI stack. In sensitive or regulated environments, it’s vital to know exactly what a system is doing, not just what it’s supposed to do. Closed platforms may promise high performance, but they often come with blind spots. Open technologies eliminate this uncertainty, increasing trust in the AI system and the entire tech supply chain.

Adaptability Across Environments

AI workloads are increasingly running on a cloud-edge computing continuum, including HPC environments, local cloud providers, 5G edge locations, and private deployments. Proprietary platforms often fall short in these distributed hybrid settings, introducing integration headaches and vendor lock-in. Open technologies, built on standardized APIs and modular architectures, offer a seamless pathway for deploying AI across heterogeneous infrastructure resources.

Empowering Local Innovation

When the core of your infrastructure is open, the barrier for experimentation and extension is lowered. Developers can tailor components to specific domains, research institutions can adapt models for local languages or data types, and startups can build AI services without licensing barriers or opaque black-box dependencies. This is essential for Europe’s ambition to build an inclusive and sustainable AI ecosystem.

Security That Evolves With Threats

Modern AI systems are prime targets for cyber threats, data breaches, and algorithmic manipulation. Building AI factories on open infrastructure and software allows for faster patching, real-time auditing, and easier integration of advanced security mechanisms like Confidential Computing, Zero Trust, and secure boot. Security isn’t static—it evolves, and open systems enable you to evolve with it.

Lessons from Sovereign Cloud Initiatives

Europe’s efforts to create open, sovereign cloud infrastructure over the last decade have laid a strong foundation for what we now call sovereign AI factories. Projects like the €3B IPCEI-CIS have demonstrated how modular, federated infrastructures can connect multiple providers, ensure compliance, and scale flexibly across borders. These systems rely on open-source orchestrators to manage complex workloads, edge-cloud deployments, and hybrid architectures. The same orchestration logic is now being extended to manage AI workloads and inference pipelines alongside 5G network functions, real-time data processing, and GPU acceleration.

Multi-tenancy as a Strategic Asset

One of the lesser-discussed but most critical features of sovereign AI factories is secure multi-tenancy. These factories must support a range of different users, including government agencies, regional authorities, industrial partners, academic teams, and local startups. Each tenant requires dedicated resources, data isolation, and compliance guarantees without duplicating the entire infrastructure. Open platforms make this possible by allowing administrators to spin up secure, isolated environments within a shared infrastructure, preserving performance and governance boundaries.

The Bottom Line

By embracing open technologies, Europe not only asserts its digital sovereignty but also invites broad participation—from universities to startups, from public institutions to industrial giants. Open technologies are not a constraint; they are the catalyst for building a scalable, secure, and inclusive AI future in Europe, for the world. Now is the time to establish solid foundations for the AI Continent—before it’s too late.