Over 60% of Asia-Pacific enterprises plan to increase sovereign AI spending

MORE THAN 60% of enterprises in Asia-Pacific (APAC) plan to increase their sovereign cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) investments over the next two years as countries in the region advance their digitalization goals, according to Accenture Research.

In Southeast Asia alone, 64% of organizations said they will ramp up their spending on technologies to comply with national security, data protection and their countries’ own digital independence and growth agenda.

“Organizations in Southeast Asia are aligned with APAC’s broader view on sovereign AI, with compliance, data security, and governance as top investment drivers,” said Ambe Tierro, country managing director and technology lead at Accenture in the Philippines.

“With the broader adoption of AI in the Philippines, this outlook towards sovereign AI supports the national AI agenda and can further propel the innovation ecosystem in the country.”

Sovereign AI refers to a country’s ability to develop and deploy AI using its own infrastructure, data, models, and talent, Accenture Research said. This reduces dependency risks and allows both governments and enterprises to protect their critical assets and build AI foundations to enable long-term innovation and competitiveness.

“Enterprise investment in sovereign technologies is driven by the resilience agenda, with an expected focus on protecting and defending data and infrastructure in a rapidly evolving tech and policy landscape. What’s equally important to long-term resilience is an organization’s ability to innovate,” said Ryoji Sekido, CEO of Asia Oceania and APAC for Accenture.

“By creating clarity around where data lives, how systems are protected and how new ideas can scale safely, sovereign AI presents tremendous innovation potential. As businesses recognize this and as other barriers are lowered, investments will undoubtedly accelerate. We see this opening up a unique opportunity for regional players, especially telecom companies and neo-cloud operators.”

Current users of sovereign AI infrastructure in the region are public sector organizations in regulated industries like utilities, insurance, health, and energy or oil and gas.

The study showed that 60% of APAC organizations apply sovereignty to data, but only 25% extend it to AI models, including intelligence models, which results in fragmented AI environments that prioritize control but limit intelligence autonomy and scale.

This shows that sovereign AI is not yet viewed as a source of innovation or competitive differentiation, Accenture Research said.

“While investment momentum is strong, only around one in five APAC organizations associate sovereign AI with innovation-led outcomes, suggesting that many initiatives remain framed around risk mitigation rather than value creation,” it said.

“When sovereignty stops at data or infrastructure, organizations miss the opportunity to embed local context, values, and trust directly into AI decision making. Closing this gap — by extending sovereignty to where intelligence is created — is increasingly critical for building trusted, resilient, and high value AI at scale across the region.”

Most Asia-Pacific organizations prefer a “hybrid sovereignty” model that balances global hyper-scaler capabilities with locally governed infrastructure due to the high cost of sovereign-grade infrastructure and foundation models and the limited availability of local solutions, Accenture Research said.

This flexible approach is key for AI competitiveness in the region, it added.

“Our research indicates only about one-third of workloads must remain sovereign, with localization varying by country and sector. Companies must strategically determine where sovereignty matters, dialing it up or down based on risk and value. By mixing global and local providers, organizations can create flexible, secure, fit-for-purpose AI stacks, blending components to drive innovation and growth while meeting national priorities.”

Over the next two years, 63% of organizations in Asia-Pacific said they are more likely to adopt technologies with sovereign capabilities, with nearly 58% of planning to increase investments in sovereign cloud, Accenture Research said.

“Enterprises recognize that full technological independence is neither practical nor desirable, and where and how infrastructure and workloads are managed and hosted matters more than who does it. Beyond data protection, sovereign AI can drive growth and competitiveness through improved performance of AI loads, greater relevancy for better customer experience, and it can accelerate national industrial AI agendas. Enterprises that recognize this are already creating new sources of value with AI,” Kunal Shah, sovereign AI lead for APAC at Accenture, added. — Bettina V. Roc