“There is definitely worth and merit in what the tech companies provide,” said Yew. Few countries can afford to build comprehensive sovereign AI without these big tech firms, but some are trying. Yet even Korea currently trains its AI models on Nvidia GPUs and develops AI data centers with AWS. For countries pursuing sovereign AI, being in the good graces of both AI superpowers requires a delicate balancing act. And instead of building the entire AI stack, a more feasible solution may be to focus on just one part of the stack, Winter-Levy said.