Digital Embassies And Greenshield Make AI Sovereignty Portable Across Borders

G42 has unveiled a new framework that aims to let countries use artificial intelligence at scale while keeping strict legal control over national data. The approach, called Digital Embassies and Greenshield, seeks to help governments move ahead with AI services without waiting years for new domestic cloud and data centre infrastructure.

Many governments are expanding AI use in public services, defence, healthcare, energy and industry, yet infrastructure and regulatory systems often lag. Legal, security and compliance duties already apply, even when computing capacity is not ready. G42’s model is designed to close this gap and to support sovereign decision-making from the first deployment.

At the heart of Digital Embassies and Greenshield is a shift in how sovereignty is applied to data and workloads. Instead of linking authority to physical location, G42 treats sovereignty like a flag that travels with each workload, similar to how diplomatic premises retain national jurisdiction outside their home territory.

The Digital Embassies framework sets out government-to-government legal structures that define jurisdiction, authority and sovereign rights in advance. Under these arrangements, national legislation continues to apply to data and systems, even when hosted or run abroad. This makes jurisdiction portable across approved Digital Embassy environments and reduces dependency on local hardware constraints.

"Our vision is that every government, regardless of size or geography, can operationalise its digital and AI strategy with full sovereign control over its data, systems, and policies, from day one," said Omran Sharaf, Assistant Foreign Minister for Advanced Science and Technology. "Digital Embassies and Greenshield define a new era of governance where law and infrastructure are not in tension, but in alignment, enabling trusted AI at scale, even when infrastructure is hosted across borders."

"Governments are clear on their sovereignty responsibilities, but they need practical ways to deploy AI today," said Ali Al Amine, Chief Commercial Officer of G42 International. "Digital Embassies and Greenshield provide that path. They allow nations to enforce their laws and policies from day one, while preserving flexibility over how and where infrastructure evolves over time."

Digital Embassies and Greenshield operational model for sovereign AI

Greenshield operates as the execution layer for this model and is delivered by Core42, G42’s digital infrastructure subsidiary. It converts sovereign rules into technical controls across different environments. These controls standardise identity and access management, data processing rules, cybersecurity protections, compliance checks, audit logs and continuity planning for every Digital Embassy deployment.

With Greenshield in place, workloads can move between various cloud and infrastructure setups while keeping sovereignty intact. "Greenshield is implemented through Core42’s heterogeneous AI Cloud, a mesh of sovereign compute and cloud environments already deployed across multiple geographies, including sovereign AI clusters in North America, Europe and the UAE," said Talal Al Kaissi, Interim CEO of Core42 and Group Chief Global Affairs Officer at G42. "When coupled with the government-to-government agreements, Greenshield introduces technical and policy controls that enable governments to run accelerated AI workloads with sovereign controls regardless of where the infrastructure is located."

The framework also links to wider infrastructure and cloud partnerships. G42’s strategic alliance with Microsoft is used to tap into global cloud platforms and services where they meet sovereign requirements. At the same time, the model remains designed so each nation can decide how infrastructure should evolve over time, without locking into a single build path too early.

The approach aligns with major UAE initiatives such as the planned 5 GW AI campus. That campus is designed to reach around half the world’s population within a 3,200 km radius, with network latency under 60 milliseconds. This capacity is expected to act as a key sovereign AI backbone that can operate alongside Digital Embassies and Greenshield to support resilient, high-performance services.

Previously, digital sovereignty often meant storing data at home and relying on domestic facilities for control. Digital Embassies recast sovereignty as a consistent legal and operational status that applies even when infrastructure is distributed across borders. G42 states that this reduces upfront capital needs, speeds national AI projects and offers a protected route for countries seeking strong sovereign controls. As discussions with partner nations continue at the World Economic Forum in Davos and in other forums, Digital Embassies and Greenshield, linked to G42’s Intelligence Grid strategy, are being presented as a standard model for sovereign AI deployment that aims to keep intelligence powerful, secure and fairly available wherever countries choose to develop, compete and cooperate.

With inputs from WAM