G42 introduces framework for cross-border sovereign AI
Digital Embassies to close gap between ambition and infrastructure
#UAE #sovereignty - Abu Dhabi-based AI powerhouse G42 has announced the launch of its Digital Embassies framework and Greenshield, a sovereign operating model enabling nations to deploy AI securely and at scale. The new advances ensure a nation’s full legal authority and control over its data, systems and policies regardless of where infrastructure is located. The framework treats sovereignty like a flag that travels with a workload, similar to how a diplomatic mission carries legal authority beyond borders. This makes jurisdiction ‘portable’ and enforceable across agreed Digital Embassy environments rather than being constrained by physical location. The announcement was made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
SO WHAT? - As governments accelerate AI adoption across public services, national security, healthcare, energy and industry, many face a growing gap between ambition and infrastructure readiness, with domestic sovereign cloud and data centre buildouts taking years whilst legal, regulatory and security obligations apply from day one. G42 group has been promoting its Virtual Data Embassy framework for more than a year, in particular as it engages with foreign governments around the world. This has also now become part of the UAE’s digital proposition in bilateral negotiations and ‘digital data embassies’ were discussed in bilateral meetings yesterday during UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan's visit to Delhi, India.
Here are some key points about this announcement:
Abu Dhabi technology holding group G42 has announced the launch of its Digital Embassies framework and Greenshield, a sovereign operating model enabling nations to deploy artificial intelligence securely at scale whilst maintaining full legal authority and control regardless of where infrastructure is located.
The Digital Embassies framework establishes government-to-government legal constructs defining jurisdiction, authority and sovereign rights upfront, ensuring that national laws govern data and systems even when infrastructure is hosted or operated beyond a country’s physical borders.
Greenshield is the operational layer implemented by G42’s digital infrastructure arm Core42 that translates sovereign policy into execution, applying consistent sovereign controls across environments governing identity, access, data handling, security, compliance, auditability and continuity.
With Greenshield, sovereignty remains intact even as workloads move across different cloud and infrastructure configurations, ensuring control is preserved as systems scale and evolve through portable and enforceable jurisdiction mechanisms.
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.
The framework treats sovereignty like a flag that travels with a workload, similar to how a diplomatic mission carries legal authority beyond borders, making jurisdiction portable and enforceable across agreed Digital Embassy environments rather than being constrained by physical location.
The implementation is supported by G42’s strategic partnership with Microsoft leveraging global cloud platforms and services where appropriate, whilst complementing ongoing major infrastructure initiatives such as the UAE’s 5 gigawatt AI campus designed to serve roughly half the world’s population.
The rollout supports G42 and UAE AI infrastructure initiatives such as the UAE’s planned 5 gigawatt AI campus, which is positioned to serve roughly half the world’s population within a 3,200 kilometre radius with sub-60 millisecond latency. The campus could act as a critical sovereign AI backbone that is able towork in tandem with Digital Embassies and Greenshield.
Digital Embassies introduce a shift from traditional digital sovereignty that depended on physical location, treating sovereignty instead as a legal and operational status that can be enforced consistently even as infrastructure becomes more distributed across global environments.
ZOOM OUT - The UAE has become a big enabler and investor in AI infrastructure across the world via a combination of bilateral digital infrastructure agreements, commercial data centre investments and partnerships between UAE technology companies (G42 in particular) and foreign data centre operators, developers and investors. This combined with the massive data centre capacity being deployed in the UAE, make G42 well-positioned to manage and develop sovereign cloud services for UAE trade partners. It is in this context that G42 announced its Digital Embassies and Greenshield frameworks at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]