Choice: the path to AI sovereignty

Every government is laser-focused on the potential for national transformation by AI. Many view AI as an unparalleled opportunity to solve complex national challenges, drive economic growth, and improve the lives of their citizens. Others are concerned about the risks AI can bring to its society and economy. Some sit somewhere between these two perspectives. But as plans are drawn up by governments around the world to address the question of AI development and adoption, all are grappling with the critical question of sovereignty — how much of this technology, mostly centered in the United States and China, needs to be in their direct control? 

Each nation has their own response to that question — some seek ‘self-sufficiency’ and total authority. Others, particularly those that do not have the capacity to build the full AI technology stack, are approaching it layer-by-layer, seeking to build on the capacities their country does have and then forming strategic partnerships to fill the gaps. 

We believe AI sovereignty at its core is about choice. Each nation should have the ability to select the right tools for the task, to control its own data, and to deploy applications at will, all without being locked into a single provider or a single way of doing things. It's about autonomy and options, realized through a diversified, resilient digital supply chain. 

Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. We make tools for developers around the world to build Internet and AI applications that are widely, and in many cases, freely, available. We work on standards to improve interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in. And we are global — our network spans 330 cities in over 125 countries. By supporting local developers to build and deploy AI tools and services right where they are, Cloudflare can help each nation on their path to greater AI sovereignty. 

Many nations recognize the practical challenge of realizing a robust AI-driven future that incorporates sovereignty — the significant cost and complexity of the infrastructure needed to set AI in action. Cloudflare believes that countries can achieve their objectives by creating vibrant marketplaces that allow multiple options, and we are creating a path for governments that provides maximum choice:

Infrastructure accessibility: Countries often focus on building large data centers that have the compute capacity to train general purpose AI models, neglecting the infrastructure needed to effectively deploy AI. Because of their proximity to end users, distributed edge networks are critical to ensuring that consumers can actually use AI technologies at scale. Although some AI technologies will be designed to work on-device, many will need more power to run AI inference, the tasks that users ask an AI engine to complete.  Distributed networks are equipped to run AI workloads at the edge, to help deliver the low latency and high performance needed for advanced technologies. Cloudflare’s distributed network gives developers a path to rapidly deploy their apps globally without massive upfront investments. 

Inclusivity: Nations want their entire economies, from the small businesses, to research institutions, to non-profits and enterprises, to benefit from AI transformation. Serverless models like Cloudflare’s make it easy to get started. Developers pay only for what they use, rather than being locked into paying for expensive and unnecessary compute, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry. Our free tier allows developers to experiment, build, and even launch applications without any cost, while our pay-as-you-go model for increased usage removes the significant financial barriers that might otherwise keep advanced AI out of reach. 

Control over data: An important part of sovereignty is the ability to control your own data. We believe countries should avoid equating this type of control with data locality, focusing instead on integrating security tools that provide visibility and the ability to restrict access to data.  Cloudflare’s global, distributed network ensures that developers can experiment, build, and deploy AI-powered applications right where they are, setting rules and controls at the Internet edge.

Multi-modal, dynamic markets: Building new applications with closed AI models can make it challenging to switch models later, and can make developers dependent on particular providers. AI strategies must embrace diversity — developers should have access to a wide variety of both open source and closed AI models. Cloudflare’s Workers AI platform, with over 50 open source models, is model agnostic, helping to create a competitive, dynamic environment where developers can swap models in and out as better, cheaper, or more specialized options become available. Cloudflare’s AI Gateway allows our customers to connect and control all their AI models, regardless of vendor, in a single, unified, interoperable platform. 

Underpinning all of this is the importance of open standards that encourage interoperability. Open standards and protocols throughout the AI technology stack help prevent dependency, create dynamic and competitive markets, and create choice for governments and their developers.

Many countries have started to put their own mark on how to spur innovation in their markets, starting with large language models (LLM).  AI development to date has mostly centered around LLMs  trained on English-centric data, and increasingly, Chinese-centric data, leaving behind those who can’t fully access this technology in these two languages. Recognizing this gap, these nations are building and freely offering AI models trained on local language datasets that are fine-tuned to the nuances of their own cultures and languages. This approach lowers the barrier to entry for local businesses, organizations, and governments to create customized AI solutions for their specific markets. Open-sourcing these LLMs is to recognize that AI sovereignty is a means to an end. The goal is innovation, economic growth, and the ability to solve meaningful problems.

Cloudflare is now supporting these sovereign AI initiatives in India, Japan, and Southeast Asia. We are bringing these locally-developed, open-source AI models to developers around the world through our serverless inference platform, Workers AI.

India: India’s national vision is “AI for All”, which focuses on AI driving inclusive growth and social empowerment. India will host the momentous global AI Impact Summit in 2026, and a key element of showcasing empowering technological advancements that are accessible to the Global South. With its immense linguistic diversity, India is at the forefront of creating models that serve its hundreds of millions of Internet users in their native tongues. A cornerstone in this endeavor is the Government of India’s Bhashini, a digital public good platform that enables all Indian citizens to access the Internet and digital services in 22 official languages.

Cloudflare is now offering AI4Bharat’s IndicTrans2 model, a key open source language model that is also part of the Bhashini initiative. The model is able to translate text across 22 Indic languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit and even traditionally low-resourced languages like Kashmiri, Manipuri and Sindhi. 

You can use the @cf/ai4bharat/indictrans2-en-indic-1B model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/ai4bharat/indictrans2-en-indic-1B \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "text": ["What is your favourite food?", "I like pizza"],
    "target_language": "guj_Gujr"
}'

Japan: Japan has a very clear and expansive vision of AI development. Concerned about Japan’s slow AI uptake, the Japanese government aims to make the country “the world’s most friendly AI nation” by creating the ideal conditions for AI growth, both at home and abroad. A major initiative for Japan’s government is supporting AI that deeply understands the complexities and cultural context of the Japanese language. 

Cloudflare is offering Preferred Networks, Inc.(PFN)  PLaMo-Embedding-1B, a home-grown Japanese text embedding model, made freely and openly available. The Japanese government supported PFN through its Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC) program, which supports local LLM development through subsidized access to compute resources for training. The PLaMo Embedding model enables users to generate high-quality embeddings for Japanese text, which is helpful for building RAG-powered applications and semantic search use cases.

You can use the @cf/pfnet/plamo-embedding-1b model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/pfnet/plamo-embedding-1b \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  	"text": [
            "PLaMo-Embedding-1Bは、Preferred Networks, Inc. によって開発された日本語テキスト埋め込みモデルです。",
            "最近は随分と暖かくなりましたね。"
        ]
}'

Southeast Asia: As Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Working Group on AI Governance, Singapore’s ambitious National AI Strategy 2.0 aims to ensure that AI is a public good, both for Southeast Asia and the world. As a cornerstone of this strategy, Singapore is championing the development and adoption of SEA-LION, a family of open-source LLMs designed for Southeast Asia's diverse languages and cultures. The initiative aims to establish the nation as an inclusive global AI leader, ensuring the technology is both accessible and regionally relevant to its multilingual and multicultural populaces. The models are adept in numerous regional languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tamil, unlocking AI technologies for a significant portion of the Asian and global population.

SEA-LION model v4-27B is now available on the Workers AI platform. SEA-LION v4 stands out on the Singapore government’s leaderboard as its most powerful, efficient, multimodal and multilingual model yet. 

You can use the @cf/aisingapore/gemma-sea-lion-v4-27b-it model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/aisingapore/gemma-sea-lion-v4-27b-it \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "แล้วทำผัดไทยอย่างไร"
    }
  ]
}'

Singapore, India and Japan have all chosen to open-source many of their local language models, a strategy that champions an expansive vision of AI sovereignty. This approach demonstrates a crucial understanding: true AI sovereignty is ensuring you have choices. 

Supporting local language open source models is more than just supporting technology; this is a shared commitment to fostering an open, interoperable, and competitive AI ecosystem by empowering governments and developers to solve local problems, create economic opportunities, and preserve their digital and cultural heritages.

We are honored to support the initiatives of the governments of India, Japan, and Singapore on this journey. We believe that by putting their sovereign AI models into the hands of developers in their economies, we can help unlock a powerful wave of innovation that is more diverse, equitable, and representative of the world we live in. The future of AI is being built today, and we are proud to ensure that AI developers everywhere are at the forefront. 

Choice is the foundation of AI sovereignty. We’re starting with the models from India, Japan, and Singapore on our serverless inference platform, but it’s only the start. Come build with us! Take the first step for free on Workers AI.