KARACHI: Pakistan this week launched its first locally hosted artificial intelligence cloud, a step officials say will allow sensitive national data to remain inside the country while giving businesses and public institutions access to powerful AI computing for the first time.
Pakistan, like many emerging markets, has relied on cloud servers located abroad for AI and machine-learning workloads, raising concerns over compliance with domestic regulations, financial data privacy, telecom metadata protections and broader national security. Around the world, countries are investing in “sovereign clouds” — cloud platforms physically hosted within national borders under local jurisdiction — to build digital autonomy and reduce reliance on foreign service providers. Pakistan’s new AI cloud aims to meet that need by keeping all AI training, analytics and data processing within its borders.
The cloud has been launched by Telenor Pakistan in collaboration with Data Vault Pakistan, whose high-density AI data center will host all workloads domestically.
“Today we are turning sovereign, high performance computer into a national capability,” Data Vault Pakistan CEO Mehwish Salman Ali said at the launch event on Wednesday.
