IBM, Sarvam join hands to advance sovereign AI adoption

IBM and Sarvam have partnered to help governments and regulated organisations in India deploy AI that keeps data, operations and governance under their own control.

The collaboration highlights the growing importance of sovereign AI, an approach that allows countries and organisations to develop and run AI systems while meeting local regulatory, security and data-governance requirements.

The partnership combines IBM’s Sovereign Core software platform with Sarvam’s India-built AI stack, which includes reasoning models and multilingual voice and language technologies trained from scratch in India.

The companies plan to jointly develop and pilot AI applications for central and state governments, public sector organisations and regulated industries. Initial focus areas include citizen services, grievance redressal, document processing and administrative workflows.

The IBM GovTech AI Innovation Center in Lucknow will also serve as a joint incubation and demonstration facility to help organisations move AI projects from pilot stages into production.

“IBM Sovereign Core provides an open, enterprise-grade platform and middleware foundation designed to help governments and regulated enterprises scale AI within environments they trust while addressing governance, security, and compliance requirements,” said Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab.

The announcement comes as sovereign AI is becoming a strategic priority globally. Governments are increasingly seeking greater control over sensitive data, AI models and computing infrastructure as AI moves from experimentation to mission-critical applications.

IBM introduced Sovereign Core earlier this year as a software platform designed to help governments and enterprises operate AI in environments that remain under their own operational control while meeting compliance obligations.

“IBM’s Sovereign Core gives governments an AI-ready technology foundation they control. Our stack puts models, voice, and language technologies on top of it, so a citizen can access a benefit or resolve a grievance in their own language, on a phone call,” noted Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam.

India is also accelerating efforts to build domestic AI capabilities through the IndiaAI Mission and a broader push for indigenous AI infrastructure and language models.

In recent months, IBM announced partnerships with Yotta to bring Sovereign Core to Indian enterprises and with the Andhra Pradesh government on a sovereign AI framework. Separately, HCLTech recently unveiled plans for a major AI data centre at Odisha’s Sovereign AI Park, underlining the wider industry shift towards locally governed AI infrastructure.