AI Sovereignty: Charting Switzerland’s Path Amid US and Chinese AI Dominance

November 10th, 2026, 09h30-18h00,
Starling Hotel,
1025 Saint-Sulpice

This event is an official Road to Geneva event, approved as part of the Geneva AI Summit 2027 pre-event programme. The Geneva AI Summit will take place on 21–22 June 2027 at Palexpo, Geneva. Follow the conversation using #GenevaAISummit and #RoadtoGeneva.

In brief: Global AI capability is concentrating in the United States and China, leaving middle powers increasingly dependent on infrastructure, models, and decisions they do not control. Two shocks in early 2026 — export controls on US frontier models and unpredictable AI costs — have made this dependency concrete and urgent. This full-day conference examines what AI sovereignty means in practice across five dimensions — technical, legal, cultural, economic, and geopolitical — draws lessons from what other middle powers are doing, and works toward actionable recommendations for a Swiss national AI sovereignty strategy. It is organised by the Center for Digital Trust (C4DT) at EPFL and aimed at decision-makers from industry, government, academia, and civil society.

Introduction

The global AI landscape is consolidating around two dominant poles. Global corporate AI investment reached $581.7 billion in 2025 — up 130% year-over-year — while generative AI investment alone surged nearly fivefold to $170.9 billion, with the overwhelming share of this capital concentrated in the United States and China. The capability gap between the two powers is narrowing with equal speed: DeepSeek-R1 matched the leading US model in early 2025, and as of early 2026, the top American model holds only a 2.7% performance advantage over its Chinese counterpart.

For countries outside this duopoly, the consequences are no longer abstract. The first half of 2026 brought two concrete shocks — export controls restricting access to US frontier models for foreign nationals, and the discovery that cheaper tokens have not meant cheaper AI — with enterprises burning through entire annual budgets in months — that together crystallise a fundamental question: how can nations retain meaningful control over a technology increasingly expected to shape economic competitiveness, national security, and societal resilience?

AI sovereignty — the capacity of nations or organisations to govern their own AI technology stack, including data, infrastructure, and models — has consequently moved from the margins of policy debate to its centre. Middle powers that fail to secure influence over the development, deployment, and governance of AI will likely forfeit control over their economies. Switzerland brings distinctive assets to this question: it leads the world in AI researchers and developers per capita, with 110.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, hosts world-leading research institutions, and is home to Apertus, Switzerland’s own sovereign foundation model initiative. Geneva further serves as the permanent home of key international organisations actively engaged in AI governance — including the ITU, WHO, and WIPO. Whether and how these advantages translate into a credible national AI sovereignty strategy — and what roles industry, civil society, legal experts, and policymakers must play in building one — is precisely what this conference sets out to examine.

This event is organized by the Center for Digital Trust (C4DT), EPFL.

The conference is aimed at professionals and decision-makers from industry, government, academia, and civil society with an interest in AI policy, digital sovereignty, and technology governance.

Objectives

  • To examine what AI sovereignty means in practice across multiple dimensions — technical, legal, cultural, economic, and geopolitical — and assess which levers are realistically available to middle powers today.
  • To diagnose Switzerland’s current position — mapping its distinctive assets, exposing its dependencies, and assessing whether existing policy instruments amount to a strategy or merely a plan.
  • To learn from the strategies of other middle powers — Canada, Singapore, Spain, and UK — and identify the approaches most transferable to Switzerland’s specific assets and constraints.
  • To produce actionable recommendations toward a Swiss national AI sovereignty strategy, identifying the institutional actors, investment commitments, and partnerships needed to give that strategy force.

For questions about the event, please contact david.viollier@epfl.ch

Agenda

09h00

Registration and Welcome Coffee

09h30

Welcome and Introduction

by Jean-Pierre Hubaux and David Viollier, C4DT, EPFL

Session 1: What Middle Powers Are Actually Doing – Lessons for Switzerland

Switzerland is not alone in navigating AI dependence on the US and China. This session opens with a keynote making the case for why middle powers need sovereign AI strategies, before bringing together representatives from the UK, Singapore, Spain and Canada to examine the strategic choices other middle powers have made — and what Switzerland can realistically learn from them.

09h45

Opening Keynote: The Case for Sovereign AI — How Middle Powers Can Weather US and Chinese AI Dominance

by [to be confirmed]

10h15

Panel Discussion:

Moderated by: [to be confirmed]

Panelists

  • Carsten Maple, Professor of Cyber Systems Engineering, University of Warwick, UK
  • Lam Kwok Yan Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Céline Castets-Renard (Full Professor of Law, University of Luxembourg / ANITI Chair / EU AI Expert Scientific Panel, AI Office, European Commission — providing a Canadian AI governance perspective)
  • Cristian Canton Associate Director, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain

11h15

Coffee Break

Session 2: Swiss Sovereign AI – Research and Infrastructure Initiatives

Switzerland has built distinctive capabilities in AI research and infrastructure. This session presents three concrete initiatives underway: the practical possibility of running large open-source models locally without sacrificing accuracy, Apertus as a sovereign foundation model, and the challenge of aligning models with Swiss values from the ground up.

11h45

Talk: Apertus – Vision, Roadmap, and Challenges

by Antoine Bosselut, Professor, Natural Language Processing Laboratory NLP, EPFL

12h10

Talk: Sovereign AI for All: Running Large Open-Source LLMs Locally

by Rachid Guerraoui, Professor, Distributed Computing Laboratory DCL, EPFL

12h35

Talk: From Model Training to Model Raising – Alignment as a Sovereignty Problem

by Robert West, Professor, Data Science in AI Laboratory DLAB, EPFL


13h00


Lunch

Session 3: Sovereign AI in Practice – Industry and Civil Society Perspectives

AI sovereignty is not only a matter of policy and research – but it is also shaped by what industry builds, what enterprises deploy, and what society perceives, trusts, and is willing to adopt. This session brings together voices from the private sector and civil society to ground the discussion in operational reality.

14h15

Keynote: Building Sovereign AI Products: The Case for a European Alternative

by Wallyson Lemes de Oliveira, Chief AI Officer, Giotto.ai

14h45

Talk: Deploying Sovereign AI at Scale – Lessons from the Field

by [to be confirmed]

15h10

Fireside chat: The Swiss Industry Perspective – AI Sovereignty in Practice

with Yves Pitton, Chief Business Solutions Officer and Executive Board Member, ELCA, and [to be confirmed]

Host: [to be confirmed]

15h40

Talk: AI Literacy and Society: Who Gets Left Behind?

by [to be confirmed]


16h00


Coffee Break

Session 4: Switzerland’s AI Sovereignty Strategy — From Assets to Action

The closing session turns from analysis to action. A keynote presenting 22 concrete legal and policy recommendations is followed by a panel bringing together federal, cantonal, academic, and research voices to take stock of Switzerland’s distinctive assets and address the hard question of what it would concretely take to move from the current implementation plan to a genuine national AI sovereignty strategy – and who needs to do what to get there.

16h30

Keynote: Switzerland’s Legal Framework for AI Sovereignty – 22 Recommendations

by Yaniv Benhamou, Professor of Digital Law, University of Geneva

17h00

Closing Panel:

Moderated by: [to be confirmed]

Panelists

  • Yaniv Benhamou, Professor of Digital Law, University of Geneva
  • Antoine Bosselut, Professor, Natural Language Processing Laboratory NLP, EPFL
  • Wallyson Lemes de Oliveira, Chief AI Officer, Giotto.ai
  • [to be confirmed]

18h00

Closing Remarks

by Jean-Pierre Hubaux, C4DT, EPFL

18h05

Apéritif and Networking

Speakers

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