Group 42 unveils digital embassies, Greenshield for portable AI sovereignty
G42 launched a sovereign operating model designed to let governments deploy artificial intelligence (AI) securely and at scale while retaining legal authority and control over data, systems, and policies even when the underlying infrastructure is hosted outside national borders. The model is branded as the Digital Embassies framework and Greenshield.
The rollout targets a common bottleneck for governments: national AI strategies and regulatory obligations often move faster than local infrastructure buildouts. Domestic sovereign cloud and data center programs can take years, while compliance and security requirements apply from day one. The model is positioned as a way to close that timing gap without forcing countries into a single early infrastructure decision.
The “Digital Embassies” concept is built around government-to-government legal constructs that define jurisdiction, authority, and sovereign rights upfront. The aim is to ensure national laws govern the relevant data and systems even when workloads run in infrastructure located abroad, under agreed legal environments.
Greenshield is described as the operational layer implemented by Core42, G42’s digital infrastructure arm, to translate sovereign policy into execution. The controls described include identity and access management, data handling rules, security controls, compliance, auditability, and continuity requirements. The model is intended to preserve sovereign controls as workloads move across different cloud and infrastructure configurations.
The announcement also describes deployment through Core42’s heterogeneous AI cloud, framed as a mesh of sovereign compute and cloud environments deployed across multiple geographies, including clusters in North America, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates. The design is presented as supporting accelerated AI workloads while maintaining policy controls irrespective of where the infrastructure sits.
Implementation is also linked to G42’s partnership with Microsoft, with the release describing the use of global cloud platforms and services where appropriate.
The model is positioned as complementary to large-scale infrastructure projects already underway in the UAE, including the planned 5 gigawatt (GW) UAE–US AI campus in Abu Dhabi, introduced as a major compute and data center platform. Official descriptions of the campus describe a 5GW development intended to support “latency-friendly” services for a large regional footprint.
The launch materials frame the approach as a shift from location-based sovereignty toward enforceable sovereignty status across distributed environments, with an emphasis on legal clarity and operational controls as AI deployments expand across borders.
