IBM and Yotta Data Services on May 5 announced plans to build a sovereign “agentic AI” platform for enterprises and government organisations in India, as companies increasingly look for AI systems that comply with local data residency and governance requirements.

The proposed platform will combine IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate with Yotta’s Shakti Cloud infrastructure, allowing organisations to deploy and manage AI agents across functions such as IT service management, finance, procurement, HR and customer support. 

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The announcement comes at a time when Indian enterprises are moving beyond AI experimentation and beginning to operationalise AI tools at scale, especially in regulated sectors such as banking, public sector and manufacturing.

“AI innovation in India must be anchored in sovereignty, security, and performance. Together with IBM, we propose to enable enterprises to harness the power of agentic AI on a secure, India-hosted cloud, so they can innovate with confidence while maintaining control over their data and operations,” said Sunil Gupta, co-founder, managing director and chief executive officer of Yotta Data Services. 

The partnership also plans to bring IBM Sovereign Core to India through Yotta’s Shakti Cloud infrastructure. IBM Sovereign Core is designed to help enterprises build AI-ready sovereign environments with compliance monitoring, governance and controlled AI execution capabilities. 

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According to IBM, the platform is structured around four key sovereignty pillars, operational sovereignty, data sovereignty, technology sovereignty and AI sovereignty. The offering includes features such as customer-operated control planes, in-boundary encryption, continuous compliance monitoring and governed AI execution. 

The companies said the sovereign infrastructure will be hosted on Yotta’s India-based, MeitY-empanelled cloud environment, helping enterprises comply with local regulatory and audit requirements while keeping AI workloads within defined sovereign boundaries. 

“Indian enterprises are increasingly focused on operationalising AI in a way that is secure, governed, and aligned with regulatory expectations. This collaboration will combine IBM's AI capabilities with Yotta's sovereign cloud infrastructure to help organisations scale AI responsibly — embedding sovereignty, governance, transparency, and trust from the outset,” said Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India & South Asia. 

The companies also said they plan to jointly pursue proofs-of-concept, solution co-creation and technical enablement programmes across industries, including BFSI, public sector, manufacturing and digital-native businesses.