AI Sovereignty: Charting Switzerland’s Path Amid U.S. and Chinese AI Dominance

While AI development capabilities are concentrated primarily in the United States and China, the issue of control over infrastructure, models, and data is becoming a strategic challenge for economies that depend on these technologies. This one-day event will address AI sovereignty through a series of presentations and from five complementary perspectives: technical, legal, cultural, economic, and geopolitical. The goal is not to advocate for total technological independence, but to explore the means available to Switzerland to preserve its freedom of choice, diversify its suppliers, and manage its dependencies. The program will bring together international experiences, Swiss research initiatives, and the operational realities of businesses.

Among the announced presentations, you'll have the opportunity to explore topics such as:

• Apertus: Vision, Roadmap, and Challenges with Antoine Bosselut, a professor at EPFL, who will present the prospects for the sovereign foundation model developed in Switzerland.
• "Sovereign AI for All: Running Large Open-Source LLMs Locally" with Rachid Guerraoui, a professor at EPFL, exploring the possibilities of running large open-source language models locally.
• "Building Sovereign AI Products: The Case for a European Alternative" with Wallyson Lemes de Oliveira, Chief AI Officer at Giotto.ai, who will discuss the development of sovereign AI solutions as European alternatives.
• "The Missing Layer of AI Sovereignty" with Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering for AI and ML at Proton, to explore sovereignty issues from the perspective of technology providers.
• "Switzerland’s Legal Framework for AI Sovereignty: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach" with Yaniv Benhamou, professor of digital law at the University of Geneva, focusing on the legal aspects and governance of AI.

The discussions will be complemented by roundtable sessions bringing together representatives from the research community, industry, and government, among others, to assess how existing initiatives align with the conditions necessary for developing a genuine Swiss strategy for AI sovereignty.

For SMEs in French-speaking Switzerland, this event will provide an opportunity to better understand the challenges of dependence on AI providers, cost control, data protection, and the long-term viability of technology choices. The initiatives presented—particularly those focused on open models and their local deployment—will offer avenues for exploring more autonomous architectures tailored to the needs of businesses. Beyond geopolitical considerations, the event will thus help put digital sovereignty back at the heart of operational and strategic decisions related to the adoption of artificial intelligence.

Details & registration