UAE-based Open Innovation AI has partnered with data infrastructure company NetApp to explore sovereign AI infrastructure for governments, enterprises, and neocloud providers.
Announced at AI Everything Abu Dhabi 2026 on October 6, the collaboration will combine Open Innovation AI’s Sovereign AI Fabric with NetApp’s data platform. The companies will explore infrastructure supporting AI training, inference, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic AI workloads.
Open Innovation AI’s platform secures GPU infrastructure across on-premises, hybrid and air-gapped environments. NetApp’s platform provides near real-time access to AI-ready data without requiring organizations to move, copy or consolidate it.
The companies said the collaboration is intended to help organizations scale AI while maintaining control over their data, models and operating environments.
For Black and Brown businesses and technology companies building AI infrastructure, the partnership shows the growing importance of locally controlled compute and data infrastructure as governments and enterprises seek control over AI systems and sensitive data.
