Apertus and the Messy Case for AI Sovereignty

I recently read an article about an AI initiative in Groningen, aimed at reducing dependence on American and Chinese AI.

Then I read the reactions on X.

A number of technically knowledgeable people were mocking the idea of fine-tuning an existing Qwen model. The criticism was understandable: this is not particularly exotic work. Why present it as technological sovereignty?

I understood the point.

But I did not quite share the amusement.

The underlying question still seemed important: if Europe wants to be less dependent on a handful of foreign AI companies, what exactly should we be able to do ourselves?

That reminded me of Apertus.

The appeal of the clean stack

Apertus is a Swiss AI initiative involving ETH Zurich, EPFL and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre.

The Swiss have trained their own foundation models, using their national supercomputer Alps. The models are open, much of the surrounding work is transparent, and researchers can now access Apertus through public infrastructure.

There is something very satisfying about it.

Researchers. Compute. Models. Operations.

A clean stack.

I have written before that Europe needs compute if it is serious about technological sovereignty. Apertus shows what happens when that compute is connected to the expertise required to build and run models yourself.

For a moment, the conclusion seemed obvious: perhaps this is what the Netherlands should be doing.

Then I looked again.

Apertus AI

Fully Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

Swiss AI Initiative

Or perhaps an ecology

The Dutch picture is much less tidy.

GPT-NL is building foundation-model capability. The AI Factory in Groningen is building public compute, expertise and access. Commercial infrastructure is emerging elsewhere. Smaller initiatives adapt existing open models rather than building new ones.

Initially, that looked fragmented.

Now I am not so sure.

If one model disappoints, another can replace it. If foundation models become more commoditised, not every country has to keep building one. Public and commercial infrastructure can coexist. Different organisations can specialise.

Instead of controlling one stack, you create an ecology.

And ecologies are messy.

Sovereignty as optionality

I think I am naturally attracted to clean architectures.

There is comfort in drawing the whole thing, deciding which parts matter, and bringing them under control.

But real systems rarely stay that clean.

Switzerland still depends on Nvidia hardware and a much wider international technology chain. No European strategy will remove all dependencies.

Perhaps that is not the right goal anyway.

The more useful question may be whether a dependency is replaceable.

Can you switch models? Move workloads? Choose between providers? Does expertise exist in more than one place? If one component disappears, does the rest of the system continue to work?

Seen that way, sovereignty starts to look less like ownership and more like optionality.

You do not need to control every layer. You need enough capability, alternatives and understanding that no single dependency becomes destiny.

Stack or ecosystem?

I still find Apertus impressive. Switzerland has deliberately preserved the ability to build, train and operate foundation models.

But I am less convinced that its integrated approach is necessarily the blueprint.

Perhaps the Swiss are building a stack, while the Dutch are slowly assembling an ecosystem.

The first is cleaner.

The second may be more resilient.

I started out wondering whether Switzerland had built something the Netherlands was missing.

I am less sure now.

And that, I think, is the more interesting question.