Building for Europe’s sovereignty needs

For many organizations, knowing where data is processed remains an important part of meeting compliance requirements. But as the geopolitical and regulatory environment around data governance has shifted, we’re hearing a growing need among our most highly regulated customers: more control that goes beyond location alone.

The question is increasingly not just where the data is hosted, but who can be compelled to hand it over, and which laws the company offering that infrastructure is required to follow, regardless of where its servers sit. Two providers can host identical data in European data centers and operate under two very different legal frameworks. That’s the difference between data residency and data sovereignty.

Sovereignty and global scale aren’t at odds

Europe's debate around digital sovereignty frames sovereignty and global scale as two separate goals, with sovereignty painted as a retreat - build everything locally and keep the rest of the world at a comfortable distance. DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski has argued the opposite. Competing globally requires operating at scale: reaching customers everywhere and giving them access to the best technology available. 

For DeepL, that has meant continuing to build our core technology while also working with partners like AWS to expand our infrastructure globally and support customers the way that best meets their needs.

Scale and sovereignty do not have to be in tension. Both come down to what you build, where it runs and who controls it. The goal is not for European companies to limit themselves to Europe, but for Europe to build more across the technology stack, including models, infrastructure, and eventually the hardware underneath both. 

AI will generate a large share of economic value over the next decade. Building a meaningful part of that technology in Europe matters not only for resilience, but for competitiveness. For us, sovereignty is therefore not simply a question of where data resides and who can access it; it is also about who owns the models, who builds the infrastructure, and where knowledge and expertise are cultivated.

Translating sovereignty into practice

We’ve built DeepL's models and research entirely in-house from the start. As our customer base has, the infrastructure supporting that has evolved with it. 

Earlier this year, we expanded our infrastructure to include AWS, giving customers greater reach and performance, while also maintaining the security, privacy and quality standards DeepL is known for. For most customers this provides the right balance of scale, performance and control. 

At the same time, customers with the strictest sovereignty standards told us that location alone wasn't the full answer for them. They needed an environment that also addressed who operates the infrastructure and which legal framework governs it.

That's what DeepL for Sovereign Markets is built to provide. It's hosted and operated entirely within the EU, under EU jurisdiction, engineered specifically for organizations whose requirements go beyond where data physically sits. It runs alongside DeepL's global infrastructure, which continues to serve customers who prioritize worldwide scale and performance.

For customers with the strictest needs, this means even greater control over how their data is handled and which legal framework it applies to. The initial release prioritizes the core, high-volume translation capabilities that public sector and enterprise customers need most - DeepL’s leading translation quality across a broad portfolio of European and global languages, document translation, API access, and administrative controls including SSO and SCIM. 

It also carries the same security and privacy standards DeepL is known for: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, ISO 27001, and BSI C5, with customer data never used to train our models.

A long-term foundation for European AI

Across the market, digital sovereignty is rapidly becoming a key criterion in enterprise technology decisions. Organizations increasingly want European alternatives, but building dedicated, fully isolated environments takes deliberate execution.

DeepL for Sovereign Markets marks an ongoing commitment. Our global infrastructure continues to serve customers who prioritize scale and performance across markets, while our sovereign environment gives customers with stricter sovereignty needs a dedicated foundation for the long term. As regulatory frameworks and compliance needs evolve across Europe, we will continue expanding this environment to meet them and incorporate additional capabilities across our wider product suite over time.

DeepL for Sovereign Markets is available to customers in DACH, France, and EU institutions, with additional regions to follow. To explore DeepL for Sovereign Markets for your organization, please contact your sales representative.