Why countries are seeking to build “sovereign AI”
The King of Denmark just “plugged in” his country's very own supercomputer, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang by his side.
The country's new AI system is named “Gefion,” after a goddess from Danish mythology, and it is powered by 1,528 of Nvidia's popular H100 GPUs.
Denmark's new supercomputer is an example of what Nvidia calls “sovereign AI,” which the company defines as "a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks." But for countries seeking to re-write history and control the information its citizens access, the movement towards sovereign AI comes with serious concerns.
“What country can afford not to have this infrastructure, just as every country realizes you have communications, transportation, healthcare, fundamental infrastructures — the fundamental infrastructure of any country surely must be the manufacturer of intelligence.”
Selling its powerful AI GPUs and computing infrastructure to governments is a lucrative new business for the company. Nvidia and its partners have already sold AI systems to India, Japan, France, Italy, New Zealand, and Switzerland as well as countries with histories of human rights abuses like Singapore and UAE. In Nvidia's Q2 2025 earnings press release, Jensen cited sovereign AI as one of multiple future “multibillion-dollar vertical markets.”
