Interest in sovereign cloud services has followed a bumpy trajectory over the past decade, both in the public sector and private enterprises.
In the early days of cloud computing, fear, uncertainty and doubt reigned supreme in boardrooms and IT departments, as CIOs and IT decision-makers grappled with the notion of migrating workloads off physical hardware, housed in privately owned datacentres, to multi-tenanted public clouds, operated by overseas tech firms.
The situation fuelled interest in private cloud deployments, as they allowed enterprise IT departments to tap into the benefits of public cloud while maintaining a greater degree of control over the infrastructure and environment hosting their workloads.
Around this time, the domestic cloud markets in many countries, including the UK, began to flourish as providers emerged that specialised in the provision of locally hosted, sovereign public cloud services.
These setups provided UK-based enterprise IT buyers, for example, with assurances that their applications and workloads would be hosted in UK-based datacentres, whose operations would be governed by UK laws and regulations, with no access permitted by overseas governments or entities.
In time, enterprises became more at ease with using cloud technologies offered by US tech giants, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Salesforce.
However, a degree of trepidation regarding their usage persisted until these firms opened their own UK datacentres between 2014 and 2016, which offered users access to locally hosted versions of their services.
Geopolitical concerns are also focusing the minds of CIOs and IT decision-makers on making sure the cloud platforms they entrust with their data will keep it in-country and protected by domestic laws and regulations, says Oliver Hessel, head of big data products and cloud at hosting provider Ionos SE.
“Trade tensions between the US and China and policy shifts following US elections are creating supply chain uncertainties, particularly for AI hardware,” Hessel tells Computer Weekly.
“European businesses are responding with multicloud and diversification strategies, reducing reliance on non-European providers while mitigating risk, [and] digital sovereignty is increasingly tied to resilience. We’re also seeing cyber security concerns reinforce this trend,” he adds.
Against this backdrop, Hessel says hosting critical workloads locally and partnering with sovereign providers has “become a strategic safeguard” for a lot of enterprises already.
And forecast data from IT analyst house IDC, shared in its FutureScape 2026 research, suggests this trend is set to persist for some years to come.
IT market responds to rising digital sovereignty demands
The hyperscale cloud giants have responded to this trend by announcing and rolling out sovereign cloud regions, capable of providing users with access to versions of their services whose operations are governed by local laws and regulations.
Meanwhile, over the course of 2025, a new category of cloud company emerged, focused on the provision of more niche, sovereign cloud workloads.
The scaling of AI inside enterprises is becoming a major driver of sovereignty. As organisations become more ambitious, many will find that their existing infrastructure architectures cannot provide the assurances required for sensitive or regulated workloads Kate Hanaghan, TechMarketView
Known as neocloud providers, major players within this emerging category of tech suppliers include the likes of Nscale, CoreWeave and Carbon3ai, to name a few.
What these firms have in common is a focus on providing sovereign infrastructure that can be used to host high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.
According to IT market watcher Forrester, 2026 is set to be the year governments start to refine their AI strategies, with the company predicting that many will take a “tech nationalism” stance when selecting prospective AI suppliers. This suggests that many of these neocloud providers will be well-positioned to tap into this trend.
“Global digital norms will give way to tech nationalism when it comes to AI models,” Sam Higgins, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester, writes in a blog post, outlining his tech predictions for 2026. “Amid geoeconomic fractures and AI disruption, 2026 is the year governments choose domestic-first, from model selection to hosting, rewriting AI procurement and compliance in the process.”
There are also various pieces of legislation coming down the line, including the EU AI Act, that all signal a growing preference for sovereign AI services, he continues.
“We [Forrester] expect that half of the G20 will mandate domestically tuned AI models for public sector services,” says Higgins. “For firms offering solutions to the public sector, prepare for this inevitability by undertaking a thorough inventory of your model provenance along with in-market hosting options for inferencing, or risk exclusion from future public sector opportunities.”
A similar set of preferences for sovereign AI services is also expected to play out in the private sector in 2026, says Kate Hanaghan, chief research officer at IT analyst house TechMarketView, as enterprises come to realise their existing infrastructure may no longer meet their needs.
“The scaling of AI inside enterprises is becoming a major driver of sovereignty,” she says. “As organisations become more ambitious, many will find that their existing infrastructure architectures cannot provide the assurances required for sensitive or regulated workloads.”
She continues: “As a result, concerns are shifting beyond data location and into the operational and digital layers, where the focus must move to governing the people, processes and technology components – such as the AI model, data pipelines and underlying infrastructure – that influence how the system behaves.”
As is the case in the public sector, regulatory pressure looks set to accelerate the adoption of sovereign AI services too, she adds.
Speaking to Computer Weekly, Bjorn Hovland, chief operating officer at AI infrastructure company CIQ, says that in addition to regulatory and geopolitical pressures, there are also economic reasons why governments and enterprises will show a preference for sovereign AI in 2026.
“If a country outsources its ability to manage its own computing infrastructure, a foreign country or company could easily shut down key capabilities and infrastructure in the future,” warns Hovland.
If AI is the future of economic growth, countries that cannot run their own AI workloads risk being left behind and losing jobs/growth to more technologically advanced peers Bjorn Hovland, CIQ
“There is also a clear economic advantage. If AI is the future of economic growth, countries that cannot run their own AI workloads risk being left behind and losing jobs/growth to more technologically advanced peers.”
He continues: “As data continues to grow in value, governments are recognising that an inability to secure, manage and use the data generated by their countries is a major strategic vulnerability.”
Neocloud providers poised to respond
The UK government’s championing of UK-headquartered sovereign AI infrastructure provider Nscale, following the release of its January 2025 AI opportunities action plan policy paper, makes sense against such a backdrop.
Speaking to Computer Weekly, the company’s senior vice-president, Imran Shafi, says that while the analyst community is predicting an uptick in demand for sovereign AI services this year, work is already underway across Europe to meet this demand in 2026.
“Sovereign AI is increasingly about real-world implementation, rather than theory, and countries across Europe are moving beyond strategy documents and starting to build the physical infrastructure they’ll need to run critical AI systems on their own terms,” says Shafi.
“That means greater demand for AI datacentres, more clarity around operational sovereignty, and deeper collaboration with neighbours.”
Even so, Shafi is of the view that not every country will have the means, need or desire to build out their own sovereign AI infrastructure, which could see enterprises using “federated” setups to plug any gaps.
In such arrangements, AI models are trained collaboratively across multiple, decentralised, geographical locations, without the raw data itself needing to be migrated.
“This ensures sensitive workloads stay local, while energy-intensive requirements shift to regions like the Nordics or Iberia … [and this means] with the right investment in infrastructure and coordinated policy-making, Europe can stay competitive without compromising on values like privacy, sustainability and transparency.”
It is the view of INQ’s Hovland, though, that it won’t just be the neocloud providers that benefit most from enterprises and governments showing a preference for AI sovereign services in 2026.
“The two biggest winners of this trend are companies that can pivot to sovereign solutions quickly, especially hyperscalers, and companies that are building sovereign solutions by design,” he says.
“However, these are often complex technical solutions, so the winners will be enterprises that have anticipated this trend and have been building these solutions for some time.”
I’ve always approachedtaking melatonin supplements with skepticism. They seem to help every once in a while, but your brain is already making melatonin. Beyond that, I am not a fan of the sickly-sweet tablets, gummies, and other forms of melatonin I’ve come across. No one wants a bad taste in their mouth when they’re supposed to be drifting off to sleep.
This is where Onnit’s Instant Melatonin Spray comes in. Fellow WIRED reviewer Molly Higgins first gave it a go, and reported back favorably. This spray comes in two flavors, lavender and mint, and is sweetened with stevia. While I wouldn’t consider it a gourmet taste, I appreciate that it leans more into herbal components known for sleep and relaxation.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Onnit
Instant Melatonin Mist
Keep in mind that melatonin is meant to be a sleep aid, not a cure-all. That being said, one serving of this spray has 3 milligrams of melatonin, which takes about six pumps to dispense. While 3 milligrams may not seem like a lot to really kickstart your circadian rhythm, it’s actually the ideal dosage to get your brain’s wind-down process kicked off. Some people can do more (but don’t go over 10 milligrams!), some less, but based on what experts have relayed to me, this is the preferable amount.
A couple of reminders for any supplement: consult your doctor if and when you want to incorporate anything, melatonin included, into your nighttime regimen. Your healthcare provider can help confirm that you’re not on any medications where adding a sleep aid or supplement wouldn’t feel as effective. Onnit’s Instant Melatonin Spray is International Genetically Modified Organism Evaluation and Notification certified (IGEN) to verify that it uses truly non-GMO ingredients.
Apart from that, there may be some trial and error on the ideal amount for you, and how much time it takes to kick in. Some may feel the melatonin sooner than others. For my colleague Molly, it took about an hour. Melatonin can’t do all the heavy lifting, so make sure you’re ready to go to bed when you take it, and that your sleep space is set up for sleep success, down to your mattress, sheets, and pillows.
There’s a lever on the back for this compression mechanism that you manually press down and a separate button to open the dustbin at the bottom. You can use the compression lever when it’s both closed and open. It did help compress the hair and dust while I was vacuuming, helping me see if I had really filled the bin, though at a certain point it doesn’t compress much more. It was helpful to push debris out if needed too, versus the times I’ve had to stick my hand in both the Dyson and Shark to get the stuck hair and dust out. Dyson has this same feature on the Piston Animal V16, which is due out this year, so I’ll be curious to see which mechanism is better engineered.
Bendable Winner: Shark
Photograph: Nena Farrell
If you’re looking for a vacuum that can bend to reach under furniture, I prefer the Shark to the Bosch. Both have a similar mechanism and feel, but the Bosch tended to push debris around when I was using it with an active bend, while the Shark managed to vacuum up debris I couldn’t get with the Bosch without lifting it and placing it on top of that particular debris (in this case, rogue cat kibble).
Accessory Winner: Dyson
Dyson pulls ahead because the Dyson Gen5 Detect comes with three attachments and two heads. You’ll get a Motorbar head, a Fluffy Optic head, a hair tool, a combination tool, and a dusting and crevice tool that’s actually built into the stick tube. I love that it’s built into the vacuum so that it’s one less separate attachment to carry around, and it makes me more likely to use it.
But Bosch does well in this area, too. You’ll get an upholstery nozzle, a furniture brush, and a crevice nozzle. It’s one more attachment than you’ll get with Shark, and Bosch also includes a wall mount that you can wire the charging cord into for storage and charging, and you can mount two attachments on it. But I will say, I like that Shark includes a simple tote bag to store the attachments in. The rest of my attachments are in plastic bags for each vacuum, and keeping track of attachments is the most annoying part of a cordless vacuum.
Build Winner: Tie
Photograph: Nena Farrell
All three of these vacuums have a good build quality, but each one feels like it focuses on something different. Bosch feels the lightest of the three and stands up the easiest on its own, but all three do need something to lean against to stay upright. The Dyson is the worst at this; it also needs a ledge or table wedged under the canister, or it’ll roll forward and tip over. The Bosch has a sleek black look and a colorful LED screen that will show you a picture of carpet or hardwood depending on what mode it’s vacuuming in. The vacuum head itself feels like the lightest plastic of the bunch, though.
Brandon Herrera, a prominent gun influencer with over 4 million followers on YouTube, said in a video posted this week that while it was unfortunate that Pretti died, ultimately the fault was his own.
“Pretti didn’t deserve to die, but it also wasn’t just a baseless execution,” Herrera said, adding without evidence that Pretti’s purpose was to disrupt ICE operations. “If you’re interfering with arrests and things like that, that’s a crime. If you get in the fucking officer’s way, that will probably be escalated to physical force, whether it’s arresting you or just getting you the fuck out of the way, which then can lead to a tussle, which, if you’re armed, can lead to a fatal shooting.” He described the situation as “lawful but awful.”
Herrera was joined in the video by former police officer and fellow gun influencer Cody Garrett, known online as Donut Operator.
Both men took the opportunity to deride immigrants, with Herrera saying “every news outlet is going to jump onto this because it’s current thing and they’re going to ignore the 12 drunk drivers who killed you know, American citizens yesterday that were all illegals or H-1Bs or whatever.”
Herrera also referenced his “friend” Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become central to much of the debate about the shooting.
On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, traveled from his home in Illinois to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, claiming he was there to protect local businesses. He killed two people and shot another in the arm that night.
Critics of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis quickly highlighted what they saw as the hypocrisy of the right’s defense of Rittenhouse and attacks on Pretti.
“Kyle Rittenhouse was a conservative hero for walking into a protest actually brandishing a weapon, but this guy who had a legal permit to carry and already had had his gun removed is to some people an instigator, when he was actually going to help a woman,” Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic strategist, said on Fox News this week.
Rittenhouse also waded into the debate, writing on X: “The correct way to approach law enforcement when armed,” above a picture of himself with his hands up in front of police after he killed two people. He added in another post that “ICE messed up.”
The claim that Pretti was to blame was repeated in private Facebook groups run by armed militias, according to data shared with WIRED by the Tech Transparency Project, as well as on extremist Telegram channels.
“I’m sorry for him and his family,” one member of a Facebook group called American Patriots wrote. “My question though, why did he go to these riots armed with a gun and extra magazines if he wasn’t planning on using them?”
Some extremist groups, such as the far-right Boogaloo movement, have been highly critical of the administration’s comments on being armed at a protest.
“To the ‘dont bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” one member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To the fucking turn coats thinking disarming is the answer and dont think it would happen to you as well, fuck you. To the federal government who I’ve watched murder citizens just for saying no to them, fuck you. Shall not be infringed.”
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