Sovereign AI Emerging as Stable Driver for AI Infra Spending amid Bubble Fears

Scope

This is our kickoff study of Sovereign AI, a topic we expect to be important for decades. The initial study is focused on 42 countries, 38 of which have qualifying activity in our focus timeframe (Jan 2025 – present). We exclude China and the United States from project value and totals; these markets are tracked separately in MTN Consulting’s other research.

The study draws on our InfraVantage dataset. For projects with an announced date of 2025 or later, this dataset includes 195 tracked projects and vendor relationships across ten segments – compute (third-party), compute (self-designed), networking, transmission, power equipment, energy suppliers, cooling, storage/memory, terrestrial and subsea fiber, and land/buildings/cabling. We separate sovereignty-driven projects, pursued for national policy reasons, from general-commercial hyperscaler and enterprise capacity.

Key findings

$933.6B in tracked AI infrastructure spending (all ownership types - enterprise, hyperscaler, government, telco, sovereign cloud operator) across 38 of the 42 countries in scope. Of the 195 tracked projects making up this total, 73 clear our sovereignty-qualifying bar: government or state-linked ownership, explicit sovereignty branding, or policy-driven funding, rather than ordinary hyperscaler or enterprise buildout. These 73 sovereignty-qualifying projects amount to about $367.4 billion of the $933.6B total - roughly 39% of every tracked AI infrastructure dollar. We believe this share will continue to rise: sovereign AI interest is high and will likely persist even if the broader AI market faces a major correction.

Qualifying deal-making is accelerating: 36% of all deals (29 of 80) announced in 1H2026 were sovereignty-qualifying, up from 32% (20 of 62) in 1H2025. Regional qualifying rates vary: Europe is highest (34 of 79 tracked deals, 43%), MEA close behind (12 of 28, 43%), Americas in between (7 of 17, 41%), Asia lowest (20 of 71, 28%) despite being second-largest market by volume.

Vendor concentration is high: out of the 73 qualifying Sovereign AI projects, NVIDIA is named as the primary vendor in 39 cases, far ahead of AMD’s 6 references. But the AI buildout is benefiting dozens of vendors across many product categories, and there is upside in the Sovereign AI piece.

Underlying technology selection and facility design is not fundamentally different across sovereign AI vs. commercial builds.

Waste-heat reuse for district heating is common in Europe: Germany’s Schwarz Digits AI Data Center (Lubbenau) and Deutsche Telekom/NVIDIA Industrial AI Cloud (Munich) both pair direct liquid cooling with heat piped into municipal district-heating networks. Market-wide, 8 of the 10 tracked heat-reuse commitments sit in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, or Sweden.

Outlook

The current rush to build AI infrastructure has raised well-founded concerns about an AI spending bubble, and not every announced gigawatt will be built as planned. But demand for sovereign AI infrastructure specifically is more durable than the broader buildout. Shifts in the US political environment have sharpened interest elsewhere in reducing dependence on American companies and technology ecosystems. That pushes governments and regional operators toward AI capacity they control directly. We expect this sovereignty-driven segment to keep growing even if the broader hyperscaler spending cycle cools.