Canada and Germany shook hands in Munich. Their two AI champions got engaged in April and signed the papers in September. Then the most sovereign thing of the month shipped as a free download. Dual citizenship is a great deal for the passport holder. Your contract still has to pick a border.
Sovereign AI | theCUBE Research | Amit Eyal Govrin
The engagement
I want to be precise about the sequence, because the sequence is the story.
February, Munich Security Conference. Canada and Germany sign a joint declaration on AI and launch a “Sovereign Technology Alliance” to “reduce strategic technology dependencies.” [1][2] Two middle powers, one stage, a lot of flags.
April 24. Canada’s AI champion, Cohere, announces it will combine with Germany’s AI champion, Aleph Alpha. The combined company is reportedly valued at around $20 billion, and the Schwarz Group, owner of Lidl and Kaufland, plans to lead the Series E with $600 million [3][4][5][23]. Governments call this industrial policy. Your procurement team should call it a change-of-control event.
September 16. The definitive agreement is signed. One name, Cohere. Two headquarters, Toronto and Berlin. Final approval still sits with regulators in both countries [6][7]. Aidan Gomez gives it the line of the year: “No government or enterprise should have to choose between capable AI and control over their technology.” [6]
September 29. Bell Canada signs a memorandum of understanding with Cisco to deliver sovereign AI infrastructure for Canadian customers [8]. Cisco is also a Cohere investor [9]. Small country.
October 3. Aleph Alpha puts Kolibri on Hugging Face. Apache 2.0. Trained in Germany and Finland [10].
October 5. PwC and Cohere announce a global alliance, starting in Canada, to take enterprise AI “from pilots to production.” [11][12] Sovereignty, now available in billable hours.
Six announcements. Two governments, two model companies, a telco, an American network vendor, a discount grocer and a Big Four firm. Every single press release uses the same word.
That’s the whole edition. Sovereignty used to come with one passport. This month it got two, plus an office in San Francisco [11]. The question isn’t whether that’s good for Cohere. It’s which border your contract answers at when someone comes knocking.
Picture the front desk
Let me set the scene, because it is coming to a renewal near you.
A production order arrives at the new Cohere. Reception asks which headquarters it would like to be served at. Toronto says it’s a Berlin matter. Berlin says the model was trained under German law. San Francisco says nothing, because San Francisco has a lawyer. And your CISO finds out from the status page.
That’s a tableau, not a prediction. But you should know who’s at each desk before you sign, not after.
Credit where it’s earned, and this one is earned in full
Let’s give credit first, because there’s real substance here, and pretending otherwise cheapens the rest of the argument.
Gomez said the quiet part out loud, correctly. Capable or controlled is a false choice. I’ve been writing that for a year. It took the CEO of a $20 billion lab one sentence at a signing to say it louder than I ever will. Welcome aboard. Now put it in the MSA.
Cohere played on hard mode. Gomez has said, on the record, that Cohere built the company without taking early money from Amazon, Google, or Microsoft [13]. In a market where every other lab has a hyperscaler sitting in its cap table like a mother-in-law in the spare room, that’s real.
Kolibri is the real thing. Aleph Alpha wrote a definition before shipping a product: “Sovereignty, for us, combines two dimensions: how we built the model, and how it transfers to our customers.” [10] Then it did the part almost nobody does. It actually transferred it. Open weights. Apache 2.0. No user cap, no revenue clause. Trained from scratch, in Europe [10][14]. You can download it on Saturday and run it air-gapped on Monday.
Kolibri is German for hummingbird. Small, fast, 3.46 billion active parameters [14]. And the only thing in this entire story you can take home and keep.
Then you read the cap table.
Hard mode, with a Silicon Valley guest list
Cohere said no to Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It said yes to Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce and Cisco [9][15].
Hard mode. Just with a very American guest list.
None of that is a scandal. That’s how anybody builds a lab in 2026. Nobody here is lying. I’m grading the dependency, not the company. But “we didn’t take hyperscaler money” and “we’re independent of US tech” are two different sentences, and only one of them is on the record.
Now the soil.
In December 2024, Ottawa awarded Cohere up to $240 million toward a $725 million Canadian compute build [16][17]. Gomez, at the time: “By bringing cutting-edge compute to Canadian soil, we’re creating a foundation that will empower more Canadian researchers, startups and enterprises to compete globally.” [17]
Read that twice. Then read who runs the building.
CoreWeave, a US company with a market cap north of $70 billion, operates the Cambridge, Ontario data center. Cohere is the customer [17]. Canadian pension money reportedly helped finance the expansion [18].
So Canadian taxpayers subsidized the tenant. Canadian pensioners reportedly financed the building. An American company holds the keys.
The soil is Canadian. The landlord files with the SEC.
That is not a sovereign compute strategy. That’s a sovereign real estate strategy with a foreign property manager.
The family tree
Now look at the September 29 announcement again.
Canada’s flagship telco is building sovereign AI infrastructure on Cisco’s AI, networking and security stack [8]. Cisco is on Cohere’s cap table [9]. Three months earlier, Bell had already signed Cohere onto Bell AI Fabric, on Canadian-built hardware from Hypertec, running Nvidia’s full stack [19]. Nvidia is also on Cohere’s cap table [15].
Canada’s sovereign AI stack doesn’t have a supply chain. It has a family tree.
And the MOU? No public word on where the management plane lives, who holds the keys, or who gets paged [8]. An MOU is a promise to keep talking. Sovereignty is a promise to keep operating.
Here’s the part nobody is saying out loud
Dual citizenship is a privilege for the citizen. For everyone else at the border, it’s a question: which government gets to call?
My standing exhibit still applies. On June 10, 2025, Microsoft France’s director of public and legal affairs was asked under oath, in the French Senate, whether he could guarantee French citizens’ data would never be handed to US authorities without French authorization. His answer: “No, I cannot guarantee it.” [20][21]
Five words, under oath. Not because Microsoft is lying. Because contracts lose to statutes. In both directions. Jurisdiction follows the vendor, not the data center.
So when a vendor tells you it’s sovereign in two countries, congratulations. You now have two sets of statutes, two sets of regulators, and one San Francisco office to think about.
And the merger proves the point before it even closes. Ottawa and Berlin blessed it in Munich [1][7]. Ottawa and Berlin also have to approve it [6]. Two governments get a vote on who owns your vendor.
You don’t.
Here’s the part I actually enjoyed. The most sovereign artifact of the month is the only one that doesn’t care how that vote goes. Apache 2.0 has no change-of-control clause. The copy on your disk on Saturday is yours on Monday, whoever owns the company on Tuesday.
The next version? That’s a different passport.
Gomez – your turn to run the 5 Pillars
Same test as always. Two seats this time, because the month produced two very different products under one word: the Kolibri weights on hardware you hold, and the Cohere platform delivered through an alliance.
Pillar 1, Territorial: pass, and it doesn’t matter much
The question: Where do your data and compute physically reside, at rest and in motion?
The story: Kolibri was trained in Germany and Finland [10]. The weights land wherever you put them. The platform supports private-cloud, on-premises and air-gapped deployment [11]. Bell runs on Canadian soil, on Canadian hardware [19].
Under pressure: a ministry in Ottawa or Frankfurt wants zero bytes crossing a border.
Verdict: Pass, twice. Territorial is table stakes. Everybody at this party brought a flag.
Pillar 2, Operational: conditional, and the condition is in the SOW
The question: Who runs it, who holds the keys, who gets paged, and who can pull the plug?
The story: Download the weights and the pager is yours. Take the alliance, and the operating model is whatever the statement of work says. Take the Bell and Cisco stack, and the answer is currently an MOU [8].
Under pressure: PwC rolls off in month 14. Who runs the evals, the agent memory, and the audit logs after the farewell lunch?
Verdict: Pass for the weights. Conditional for the alliance. “Pilots to production” is a great slogan until production needs a pager.
Pillar 3, Technological: the one genuine win
The question: Can you audit it, fork it, self-host it?
The story: Kolibri, yes, yes, and yes [10]. The training code and the data stay in-house [14]. Open weights aren’t open source: you get the finished brain, not the upbringing. The platform is a licensed product. You can run it in your building. You can’t fork it.
Under pressure: the combined company reprioritizes its roadmap after closing. They usually do.
Verdict: Pass for the weights. Partial for the platform. The hummingbird flies. The platform needs a visa.
Pillar 4, Legal: incomplete, pending two governments
The question: Which court can compel whoever holds your data, your keys, or your model?
The story: Two headquarters. Two legal systems. An office in San Francisco [11]. A merger still waiting on regulators [6][7]. If the model runs air-gapped on your hardware, most of this is somebody else’s problem. If anything in your request path calls home, it’s yours.
Under pressure: a production order lands at the entity that signed your contract. Quick, which entity was that?
Verdict: Incomplete. Two passports are not two shields. They’re two subpoenas.
Pillar 5, Financial: the loudest split on the board
The question: Can you leave? On your timeline, at a survivable cost, without a meter you don’t own setting your gross margin three years out?
The story: The weights cost you a download and your own GPUs. The platform belongs to a company reportedly valued at around $20 billion [3][5], whose CEO has said it hopes to go public “soon” [22] and that “IPOs are a good forcing function.” [13]
He’s right. The question is what they force. Usually, it’s the price.
And credit where it’s due on the cap table, too. The lead investor in transatlantic sovereign AI is the company behind Lidl [4][23]. I’m not joking, and honestly, it might be the most reassuring line in the deal. Nobody on earth understands shelf pricing better than a discount grocer. I’d just like the same clarity on mine.
Under pressure: model your unit economic alpha at 3x today’s platform price, post-IPO.
Verdict: Pass for the weights. Unpriced for the platform. Unpriced isn’t a fail. It’s homework, and the bell rings at your renewal.
Kolibri on your own hardware: 4 out of 5. The platform through an alliance: 2.5 out of 5. Same family. One download apart. Nothing scores five out of five, and if your vendor’s deck says otherwise, that’s the sovereign-washing tell.
The executive TCO
Three line items, none of which show up on the invoice:
- Change of control. Your vendor is being acquired, or doing the acquiring, before your renewal. Price the cost of re-papering every contract when the signing entity changes.
- The integrator tail. Alliance pricing covers the build. It rarely covers the morning after the consultants leave. Price the headcount it takes to run what they built.
- The post-IPO meter. Today’s price is a private-company price. Public companies have quarterly calls. Put a number on a 3x repricing and see if your margin survives it.
Same baseline-and-burst strategy as always. Baseline on open weights you hold. As of Saturday, that list has a new bilingual English-German entry. Burst to the platform, or to a frontier model, through a gateway you own.
Hybrid is fine. I’d sign off on it. Mislabeling isn’t.
Own the core. Stay movable at the edges. This month, the edge shipped for free.
What to do Monday
- Get the weights on your disk. Download Kolibri and run your own evals on your own tasks. Even if you never deploy it, your exit strategy just got a benchmark.
- Add a change-of-control clause to every AI contract renewing in the next 12 months. Assignment needs your consent. Pricing holds for 24 months after any merger closes.
- Name the signing entity. Toronto, Berlin, or San Francisco. Write it into the risk register next to the statutes it brings.
- Ask your telco who holds the management-plane keys. If the answer is “it depends,” ask what it depends on. Then ask whom it depends on.
- Put the crown jewels in the SOW. Identity, audit logs, agent memory and context, and evals stay in your tenancy, and transfer to your team the day the integrator leaves.
And one question for every vendor who used the word this month:
“Which passport is on my contract? And which government can serve it?”
If the answer is “both,” you don’t have dual citizenship. You have two landlords.
So which passport is on your contract?
I want this merger to work. A transatlantic lab outside the US-China axis is better for every buyer I advise than one fewer option. Better a Toronto-Berlin champion with a grocer on the cap table than another hyperscaler marketplace.
But a vendor can sell you sovereign components. It cannot sell you sovereignty.
The part you actually own this month is the part they gave away for free on a Saturday.
Dual citizenship is great for the citizen. If your vendor answers to two governments and you answer to neither, you’re not sovereign. You’re a plus-one on someone else’s passport.
Want your vendor estate run through the 5 Pillars before your next renewal, change-of-control clause included? Agentcy Labs runs procurement-facing Sovereignty Assessments: your vendor estate through all 5 Pillars, named risk factors, no pass/fail theater. We build the crown jewels layer, and you own it outright. Not licensed. Not hosted on our terms. Book one: amit@agentcylabs.com
Amit
Amit Eyal Govrin is Principal Analyst, Sovereign AI at theCUBE Research and CEO and co-founder of Agentcy Labs.
References
[1] Yahoo Finance, “Canada and Germany sign AI joint declaration and launch Sovereign Technology Alliance,” Feb 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-germany-sign-ai-joint-162600146.html [2] Global News, “Canada-Germany AI declaration signals further drift away from U.S.,” Feb 2026. https://globalnews.ca/news/11668118/canada-signs-ai-declaration-germany/ [3] CNBC, “Cohere to acquire German AI company Aleph Alpha as it looks to expand in Europe,” Apr 24, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/cohere-aleph-alpha-germany-ai-europe-expansion.html [4] Schwarz Digits, “Cohere and Aleph Alpha to form global AI powerhouse,” Apr 24, 2026. https://schwarz-digits.de/en/presse/archive/2026/cohere-and-aleph-alpha-to-form-global-ai-powerhouse [5] Axios, “Cohere valued at around $20B in Aleph Alpha deal,” Apr 24, 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/24/cohere-20-billion-aleph-alpha-europe [6] The Next Web, “Cohere and Aleph Alpha sign, with headquarters in Berlin and Toronto,” Sep 16, 2026. https://thenextweb.com/news/cohere-aleph-alpha-definitive-agreement-transatlantic-sovereign-ai [7] TechCrunch, Anna Heim, “Why Cohere is merging with Aleph Alpha,” Apr 25, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/25/why-cohere-is-merging-with-aleph-alpha/ [8] BNN Bloomberg, “Bell signs agreement with Cisco to collaborate on sovereign AI infrastructure,” Sep 29, 2026. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2026/09/29/bell-signs-agreement-with-cisco-to-collaborate-on-sovereign-ai-infrastructure/ [9] Crunchbase News, “Cohere Raises $500M At $5.5B Valuation,” Jul 2024. https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/ai-cohere-valuation-rises-psp-cisco-fijitsu/ [10] Aleph Alpha, “Kolibri Has Landed: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model,” Oct 3, 2026. https://aleph-alpha.com/en/blog/kolibri-has-landed-a-sovereign-open-weight-model/ [11] PwC Canada and Cohere, “PwC and Cohere announce a global alliance to accelerate secure and trusted enterprise AI adoption,” Oct 5, 2026. https://newswire.ca/news-releases/pwc-and-cohere-announce-a-global-alliance-to-accelerate-secure-and-trusted-enterprise-ai-adoption-892514657.html [12] EuropaWire, “PwC and Cohere form global alliance to move secure enterprise AI from pilots to production,” Oct 6, 2026. https://news.europawire.eu/pwc-and-cohere-form-global-alliance-to-move-secure-enterprise-ai-from-pilots-to-production/eu-press-release/2026/10/06/16/49/03/182074 [13] Upstarts Media, “Cohere’s Aidan Gomez On Sovereign AI, Turning Down Big Tech Money, And An IPO,” Apr 16, 2026. https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/podcast-cohere-aidan-gomez [14] OfficeChai, “German AI Startup Aleph Alpha Launches Kolibri, Billed As A Sovereign European Model,” Oct 4, 2026. https://officechai.com/ai/kolibri-aleph-alpha [15] Cohere, “Cohere Secures $270M Series C to Scale Enterprise Generative AI,” Jun 2023. https://cohere.com/blog/announcement [16] The Logic, “Ottawa is putting $240M into Cohere’s $725M Canadian AI compute plan,” Dec 2024. https://thelogic.co/news/exclusive/cohere-ai-data-center-coreweave/ [17] The Globe and Mail, “CoreWeave to operate AI data centre in Cambridge, Ont., with Cohere as customer,” Jul 2025. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-coreweave-ai-data-centre-cambridge-ontario-cohere/ [18] Connect CRE Canada, “CPPIB Commits $225M to Cambridge Data Centre Expansion Project.” https://www.connectcre.ca/stories/cppib-commits-225m-to-cambridge-data-centre-expansion-project/ [19] Bell, “Bell AI Fabric, Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC announce landmark deal to further advance sovereign AI in Canada,” Jun 18, 2026. https://explore.business.bell.ca/news-and-events/bell-ai-fabric-cohere-hypertec-buzz-hpc-landmark-deal-to-further-advance-sovereign-ai-in-canada [20] heise online, “Not sovereign: Microsoft cannot guarantee the security of EU data,” Jul 2025. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Not-sovereign-Microsoft-cannot-guarantee-the-security-of-EU-data-10494789.html [21] SDxCentral, “Microsoft tells French lawmakers it can’t protect user data from US demands,” 2025. https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/microsoft-tells-french-lawmakers-it-cant-protect-user-data-from-us-demands/ [22] Bloomberg, “OpenAI Rival Cohere Looking to IPO ‘Soon,’ CEO Gomez Says,” Oct 21, 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-21/openai-rival-cohere-looking-to-ipo-soon-ceo-gomez-says [23] Wikipedia, “Schwarz Gruppe” (owner of Lidl and Kaufland). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarz_Gruppe
