# Sovereign AI Positioning Selling AI into markets where Western incumbents don't prioritize or can't operate. GCC, Southeast Asia, Africa. The moat is political, not technical. In industrial AI, the most dangerous competitor is AspenTech bundling a free optimizer for 80% of process plants. But AspenTech doesn't have sovereign relationships in Qatar. Doesn't have on-the-ground presence in emerging markets. Doesn't speak the language of national infrastructure programs. This flips the usual competitive analysis. Technical moat might be narrow and conditional. Political/sovereign positioning in specific geographies might be more durable than any patent. The trade-off: sovereign positioning limits TAM to specific regions. It also limits competition. For a company at $500k-$5M ARR, a protected regional market with room to grow is more valuable than a global market where you're competing with incumbents' bundled features. Sovereign AI intersects with the broader trend of nations wanting to control their own critical infrastructure intelligence. Countries don't want their airport operations or refinery optimization running on a Silicon Valley cloud that could be sanctioned or shut off. See [[Data Centre First Principles]] for the infrastructure layer that enables this. Related: [[Incumbent Bundling Risk]], [[Technical Moat Assessment Framework]], [[Industrial AI MOC]] --- Tags: #deeptech #kp