Three Belgian tech partners, Combell (team.blue), delaware and imec, are joining forces to help organisations keep their AI costs and data under control with the European Sovereign AI Cloud.
Employees are using artificial intelligence more and more, but companies are losing their grip on costs and data management. Combell, delaware and imec are signing a letter of intent to jointly launch a new European Sovereign AI Cloud (ESAI). The partners describe the new offering as a private AI infrastructure in Europe that helps organisations choose their own AI models and keep sensitive data within their own jurisdiction.
The growth in AI use is outpacing the control over it. Almost half of employees use generative AI through personal accounts, while more than a third of organisations do not check budgets against AI use. Research firm Gartner predicts that the cost of AI agents will be five times higher by 2028 than it is now.
Bart Van Kerkhoven, partner at IT consultancy delaware, stresses the importance of a secure alternative: “AI costs can quietly add up, while data ends up outside the company’s control. Banning AI without offering an alternative is not a realistic answer.”
A controlled AI infrastructure
The ESAI environment rests on three pillars, with each partner responsible for one: AI governance from delaware, GPU capacity from Combell in European data centres, and model optimisation by imec. Delaware’s AI gateway acts as the central access point for all AI requests. The gateway can strip out personal data, monitor budgets per team and keep audit logs, which helps organisations comply with regulations such as the AI Act, NIS2 and DORA.
“The gateway adds a control layer without replacing existing AI services,” says Benjamin Jacobs, director at delaware. “Customers can use the infrastructure for workloads that demand sensitivity, scale or predictability.” The solution builds on earlier collaborations. Jacobs was previously CTO at Combell and led Sentia, a spin-off that was acquired by delaware.
GPUs in European data centres
Combell provides dedicated GPU servers in European data centres, managed by its own teams. “Customers want to know where their AI runs and what it costs,” says Simon Van der Heyden, managing director of Combell. “Our answer is predictable capacity in certified European data centres, close to business processes.”
Jonas Dhaenens, founder of team.blue (Combell’s parent company), adds: “Many customers already trust us with critical infrastructure. For AI, they want the same reliability: 24/7 management, predictable costs and data under European jurisdiction.”
Kenneth Deviaene, Solution Sales Representative at Combell, already revealed at a data centre roundtable organised by ITdaily earlier this year that the company offers ‘GPU-as-a-Service’ from data centres in Denmark. “If we were to host them in Belgium, the price of the service would go up,” he said.
Optimisation tailored to the customer
Then there is imec. The Leuven research centre evaluates and optimises AI models based on the customer’s actual workloads, rather than standard benchmarks. Steven Latré, VP Artificial Intelligence at imec, explains: “Sovereignty means being able to choose for yourself, but that choice should not be guesswork. We test models on the customer’s own documents and tasks via imec.aistack and optimise their performance on the infrastructure.”
The three partners are aiming for a credible alternative to American AI platforms and are starting with customer assessments to map out their AI use. Initial talks with interested companies are under way. For organisations that take AI costs and data management seriously, ESAI offers a structural solution in a European context.