Every day, 30 major enterprises commit themselves to a sovereign AI and data platform strategy
Executive Summary
- EDB interviewed more than 2,000 senior executives across 13 countries about how they are planning for the agentic AI world. Thirty enterprises per day are making strategic commitments to becoming sovereign AI and data platforms.
- Only 23% of enterprises today understand that success depends on three mission-critical factors: the integration of AI and data, sovereign control over both, and the ability to operate as their own AI and data platform. These organizations that already do so are four times more likely to be achieving near-transformational economic returns. Within three years, this number is projected to reach 50%.
- Business pressures are the driving forces behind this movement. 75% of executives cited security and compliance, agility and observability, the need to break out of silos, and the need to deliver business value as first-level drivers for sovereignty. Only 5% cited geopolitical concerns.
- While 30% of large enterprises have already made the strategic commitment to a sovereign AI and data platform, 95% say it will be a mission critical priority for them within the next three years.
- The economic leaders (13%) are generating 21% of the total global ROI. This group is standardizing on open source technology. Eighty-one percent of enterprise leaders believe an open source strategic data infrastructure is their future.
- Meanwhile, the laggards—the trailing 30% of the global total— have generated just 19% of the total ROI.
- The 53% who have a mixed commitment to mainstream agentic apps are getting mixed results.
The advent of agentic AI has established sovereignty as a business imperative. We are at the crest of the wave. New strategic commitments being made every day that will shape the future of business, and demands for sovereignty will have an outsized impact on enterprise tech.
Methodology:
From our ongoing global research—spanning 13 countries across the globe that create more than $48 trillion in combined GDP—EDB interviewed more than 2,000 senior executives (C-suite and VP levels) about one of the defining questions of our time: How will they manage, optimize, and win in this agentic AI world? What follows is the initial findings of our research. We will release the full report later this summer.
We focused on large enterprises (500+ employees) across the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Nordics (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), Japan, South Korea, India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Roughly 34,500 organizations of this scale represent these geographies.
This is a moment of urgency. The booming global data and AI economy could reach $16.5 trillion and will capture 17% of global GDP by 2028 (Forrester). The synthesis of AI and data are forming a new paradigm of sovereign AI and data platforms.
What our initial findings revealed: The window to lead this new world is narrow—and the playbook is still being written.
Organizations are preparing for the age of agentic AI by asserting greater control over their mission-critical data through unified, hybrid-by-design infrastructures. This approach gives them the agility and control needed to harness AI effectively and securely—without being hindered by data silos, exposing proprietary data to public LLMs, or locking into specific cloud providers. The upside is clear: tighter margin control, faster innovation cycles, and entirely new growth and revenue opportunities. The risk of inaction is just as stark.
The reality is that anybody can do this—build and create their own sovereign data and AI platform for success. In 2005, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat reframed globalization through the lens of technology and free trade. In this case, the advantage goes to those with ownership of their data, control over their AI, and the sovereign infrastructure to put it to work.
The “big four” indicators of your future are in front of you. Become your own sovereign AI and data at any scale, now:
(1) The speed of changing attitudes and response is staggeringly fast around the globe.
In our research, we asked executives three interconnected questions:
- How mission critical is it for your organization to become its own data and AI platform?
- How essential is the integration of AI and data by 2028?
- How important is the idea of sovereignty, as a mission-critical imperative?
The results reveal a global inflection point. Today, 29% of global respondents said it is mission critical to them now. This number explodes to 68% within just three years, a shift that will unfold in fewer than 775 working days.
Some regions are already out in front in terms of thinking and acting on the idea of sovereignty. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are tied with Germany and lead by some distance (10%) in the world of mission-critical importance for data and AI sovereignty. The US trails Saudi Arabia and the UAE by 14% in AI and data platform readiness. The UK—despite having the third-largest footprint in data centers and AI employment (after the US and Germany)—lags even further, sitting roughly 45% behind and ranking last among the major economies measured.
The takeaway? Regardless of geography, the world’s largest enterprises are aligning around a shared reality: The fusion of AI and data isn’t optional. And sovereignty isn’t theoretical.
(2) Thirty major enterprises a day are making this commitment—and geopolitics is only 5% of the driving force.
Every day for the next three years, 30 major enterprises are expected to make a strategic commitment to becoming their own AI and data platform. They see what digital and AI-native companies such as Amazon have already proven: Owning the stack means owning outcomes.
Right now, 30% say this shift is mission critical. In just three years, that figure will reach 95%.
Regions leading the curve are India and the Nordics, with a composite index score of 113, while the U.S. lags the group with an average score of 96. Italy ranks as the least convinced economy at an index of 80, some 33 points behind front-runners.
But here’s what’s most surprising:
Despite the headlines, geopolitics accounts for just 5% of the rationale behind this transformation. A simple combination of business truths is the driving force.
According to our data, 75% of first-level drivers for sovereignty are about pragmatic business needs:
- Data must be secure and compliant.
- AI must be observable and agile.
- Systems must break out of silos.
- Platforms must deliver real business value.
(3) ROI is still being chased, but the intent is global and growing.
McKinsey believes that, thus far, only 1% of all AI has been delivering transformative results for organizations (2024). Our interviews with more than 2,000 executive leaders largely echoed that view, but they added a crucial layer of nuance.
The initial measures and models point to three dramatically different economic ROI behaviors than in traditional early-adopter and digital-transformation research. Our early findings reveal three ROI patterns emerging across industries and regions:
- “Leaders” aren’t yet so far ahead that they’re out of sight. Just 13% of enterprises—around 4,420 out of 34,000—have scaled AI across most of the 15 agentic use cases surveyed. Yet this small group is already generating 21% of the total ROI being generated globally from these 34,000+ major enterprises. This gap is not so substantial that it cannot be closed. The caution to those chasing this target is that the longer the gap occurs, the greater the distance and less time there is to catch up.
- Middling commitment isn’t differentiating: Of these enterprises, 60% fall into the categories of “somewhat” or “slightly mainstream” AI and agentic AI. They account for 59% of all the ROI measured across the enterprises. That’s neither good nor bad; clearly, it is not the differentiating level we see in the 13% who are leaders.
- Laggards without core intent will suffer: The final 27% of these enterprises achieve only 19% of the total ROI. They only do a few mainstream AI and agentic AI, but they clearly are getting very little back from their level of commitment. Continued low commitment will create a challenge when, in three years, 90% of enterprises will have their own AI and data platforms (globally).
There is a broad range of ROI opportunity for everyone who commits: Of 15 potential agentic AI areas, on average, organizations are committing to 12. The tipping point to being in the leadership group is getting 10+ of these agentic AI areas into full sovereign production.
There is significant room to play, but time is ticking for sustainable advantages. In fewer than three years, two thirds of the enterprises will be 100% committed to being their own sovereign AI and data platforms.
(4) Global leadership in sovereign AI and data is a “flat world” moment for enterprise advantage.
In 2005, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat reframed globalization through the lens of technology and free trade. In two decades, sovereign AI and data platforming may represent an even stronger leveling force. In an era in which data and AI could represent the third-largest economy, the ability to control and activate these assets—wherever, however, and whenever needed—is becoming the ultimate competitive advantage.
Businessman and Harvard professor Michael Porter argued that five forces (bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products or services, rivalry among existing competitors, and threat of new entrants) could alter markets. In the minds of these enterprise leaders, all five forces will be nearly equally affected by a company’s ability to become its own sovereign AI and data platforms. Organizations will be able to respond to buyer or competitive power, reduce or increase substitutional power, or enhance and substitute for alternatives.
The first five steps to take right now towards this future
If your organization isn’t actively having these conversations at an executive, strategic level, you risk being outpaced by an increasing majority who are. And that moment is coming faster than many realize. To control your data, operationalize AI, and build for sovereignty, these are the four actions that matter most right now:
- Commit to the mission criticality of the moment: The enterprises leading in mainstream AI adoption are also the ones most committed to sovereignty, building their own AI and data platforms, and ensuring their AI and data work in tandem, every day. Turning experiments into mainstream execution—fast—ensures secure, scalable AI with CI/CD principles at the core.
- Prioritize hybrid architectures and observability: AI demands 10x more data than previous application environments. To support this, 67% of surveyed enterprises are adopting hybrid strategies and gaining better visibility across their entire data fleet. With technologies such as Postgres® increasingly dominating the landscape (30% are actively considering it), enterprises are leaning into platforms that are agile, extensible, and scalable.
- Design for security and compliance from the start: Regulatory requirements and rising cybersecurity risks are pushing enterprises to adopt secure-by-design approaches. Sovereign data depends on architectures that are compliant and able to enforce policy without adding friction.
- Establish an AI factory with low-code/no-code accessibility: Agentic AI is meant to work for everybody. It needs to be secure, compliant, and very scalable across a range of workloads and teams. The most widely adopted agentic use cases among leaders are being built by and for subject matter experts—not necessarily in IT or ops— so low-code/no-code ease of use and security become non-negotiable.
- Standardize on proven, open technology: Eighty-one percent of these enterprise leaders told us that an open source strategic data infrastructure is their future. But not all open source is created equal. Focus on solutions that offer enterprise-grade performance, governance, and cross-environment deployment capabilities on top of open architecture and principles.
Next: Model your maturity and map the ROI
The full report, available later this year, will help you assess where your organization stands, by geography and industry, and what level of return you can expect based on your data and AI platform maturity. It will also provide decision frameworks for AI use cases, platform requirements, and your next area for focus. The report and its interactive tool will help you:
- Model which segment you are truly in
- Learn what the next steps for success should look like if you want to improve your performance
- Understand the data and AI infrastructure for success used by your most successful peers
- Print out a customized recommendation report based on peer best practices