As artificial intelligence moves deeper into core business processes, many companies find themselves locked into AI systems they cannot easily replace. That is the conclusion of a new global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value titled “The Calculus of AI Sovereignty.” The research positions AI sovereignty as a decisive factor for business continuity and competitiveness — a topic that also shaped this year’s VivaTech in Paris, where IBM presented its findings and where digital sovereignty ranked among the leading themes of the anniversary edition, alongside AI, cybersecurity and deeptech.

For the study, the IBM Institute for Business Value, together with Oxford Economics, surveyed 1,000 senior executives between February and April 2026 across 16 countries and 17 industries, each responsible for AI, data, technology or related functions within their organizations.

Difficult to Switch Vendors, Limited Transparency

According to the study, 71 percent of respondents say switching their primary AI vendor or model would be difficult. Some 68 percent describe meeting data residency and sovereignty requirements across different regions as a challenge — a situation that makes moving AI systems or data between environments harder.

At the same time, many organizations lack the necessary oversight: 91 percent say they do not fully understand their dependencies across AI vendors, models and infrastructure. That limits their ability to assess risk and prepare for disruption. On average, the surveyed companies experienced six AI-related disruptions within two years, largely driven by vendor services. A full 81 percent say a seven-day vendor outage would cause severe or critical disruption, effectively bringing operations to a standstill. Respondents cite further unexpected shifts across the AI ecosystem, including price increases, usage restrictions, model deprecations and degrading performance.

An Economic Rather Than a Technical Question

Ana Paula Assis, IBM Senior Vice President and Chair for EMEA and APAC, frames the development in the study’s foreword: AI has created new forms of dependency that evolve faster than traditional governance, procurement and technology cycles were designed to handle. For that reason, she argues, AI sovereignty has become one of the defining leadership issues of the moment. The stakes are no longer technical but economic: any loss of control can translate directly into margin pressure, compliance exposure or business disruption.

Sovereignty as a Competitive Advantage

The study also shows that organizations designing their AI systems to adapt data, models and infrastructure as conditions change outperform their competitors. Companies with the most advanced control capabilities see less downtime and protect 55 percent more operating profit from AI-driven disruptions. Yet only 7 percent of the organizations surveyed reach this level — pointing to a widening gap between companies building adaptable AI systems and those constrained by dependency. Some 72 percent of executives say they would even accept a 20 percent cost increase if it improved their strategic flexibility.

A majority of the organizations surveyed (73 percent) describe their AI environment as intentionally multi-vendor. In practice, however, that diversity stems less from deliberate strategy than from internal and operational realities: the leading drivers are independent decisions by individual business units (69 percent) and geographic necessity (69 percent). Legacy complexity arising from mergers, acquisitions and past decisions is also frequently cited (57 percent).

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