Sovereign AI

Build AI without giving up control.

LeanGoogs helps organisations build, evaluate and manage AI data programs around their requirements for data residency, governance, security, ownership and local expertise.

Sovereignty is not a single setting to switch on. It depends on your jurisdiction, your regulator, your contracts, your data and your infrastructure. So we do not sell a guarantee — we design the program around the requirements you actually have.

The starting point

Designed around your requirements.

Every engagement begins by answering six questions in writing, before any data is collected.

01

Where data lives

The countries and environments in which data is collected, processed and stored.

02

Who can access it

Which people, roles and environments are permitted to see or handle it.

03

How it can be used

Permitted purposes, downstream use and any restrictions you require.

04

Where it can move

Whether data may cross a border, and the conditions under which it may.

05

Who owns the result

Ownership of source data, annotations, derived datasets and deliverables.

06

How long it is kept

Retention periods, deletion triggers and what deletion covers.

Our method

The LeanGoogs Sovereignty Framework.

Six dimensions we work through with every customer to define what sovereignty means for their specific program.

This is our operational framework for designing data programs. It is not a legal certification, and it does not replace your own regulatory or legal assessment.

01

Data Residency

Where data is collected, processed and stored, and which environments are approved for each stage.

02

Data Governance

Who controls access, permissions, processing and usage, and how those controls are enforced in the workflow.

03

Data Ownership

Who owns the source data, the annotations, the derived datasets and any other deliverable produced.

04

Data Provenance

Where data came from, who contributed it, and what permissions and consent govern its use.

05

Data Mobility

Whether data may move across jurisdictions, and the contractual and regulatory conditions under which it may.

06

Local Intelligence

Whether the people producing and evaluating the data understand the language, market and domain in question.

Data residency

Data residency options.

The architecture is designed according to your requirements and those of your jurisdiction. These are the models we work with.

01

In-country

Data is stored and, where applicable, processed within the required country.

02

Regional

Data is handled within an approved regional infrastructure environment.

03

Customer-controlled

You retain control of the relevant infrastructure or environment, and we work inside it.

04

Controlled cross-border

Data may move across jurisdictions only under agreed contractual and regulatory conditions.

The appropriate model is determined by your regulatory, contractual, security and operational requirements. We will tell you plainly which models we can support for your engagement, and which we cannot.

Transparency

Know where your data goes.

Before a project begins, we define the approved data environment, access controls, processing locations, transfer conditions and retention requirements that apply to the engagement.

Control agreed

Approved locations and contributors

What that covers

Where data is gathered, by whom, and under what consent. Contributors are bound by confidentiality terms before they see anything.

Controls are agreed per engagement and recorded before collection begins. Where a requirement cannot be met, we say so during scoping rather than after signature.

Customer control

You decide how your data is used.

Security asks you to trust us. Control gives you mechanisms to govern us. For a sovereign organisation, the second matters far more.

Each of these is specified in the engagement rather than left to our discretion or to a default.

  • Permitted useyou define
  • Accessyou define
  • Retentionyou define
  • Deletionyou define
  • Geographic restrictionsyou define
  • Downstream useyou define
  • Third-party accessyou define
  • Derived datasetsyou define
  • Intellectual propertyyou define
Jurisdictions

Sovereignty is not one-size-fits-all.

Every market has its own regulatory, contractual, security and governance requirements. We work with customers to design data programs around the jurisdictions in which they operate.

NigeriaKenyaGhanaSouth AfricaRwandaEgyptEthiopiaand other markets

Country requirements vary, and they change. We do not publish legal positions per market. Speak with our team about the jurisdictions that apply to you.

Local intelligence

Sovereign AI requires more than local servers.

A country can have servers physically inside its borders while the data, the models, the expertise, the ownership and the decision-making all remain controlled somewhere else.

Sovereignty is not only about where infrastructure sits. It is also about who defines whether the AI works. That judgement has to come from people who understand the language, the profession and the market being served.

See Human Intelligence

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