Each nation has their own response to that question — some seek ‘self-sufficiency’ and total authority. Others, particularly those that do not have the capacity to build the full AI technology stack, are approaching it layer-by-layer, seeking to build on the capacities their country does have and then forming strategic partnerships to fill the gaps. 

We believe AI sovereignty at its core is about choice. Each nation should have the ability to select the right tools for the task, to control its own data, and to deploy applications at will, all without being locked into a single provider or a single way of doing things. It's about autonomy and options, realized through a diversified, resilient digital supply chain. 

Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. We make tools for developers around the world to build Internet and AI applications that are widely, and in many cases, freely, available. We work on standards to improve interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in. And we are global — our network spans 330 cities in over 125 countries. By supporting local developers to build and deploy AI tools and services right where they are, Cloudflare can help each nation on their path to greater AI sovereignty. 

Many nations recognize the practical challenge of realizing a robust AI-driven future that incorporates sovereignty — the significant cost and complexity of the infrastructure needed to set AI in action. Cloudflare believes that countries can achieve their objectives by creating vibrant marketplaces that allow multiple options, and we are creating a path for governments that provides maximum choice:

Infrastructure accessibility: Countries often focus on building large data centers that have the compute capacity to train general purpose AI models, neglecting the infrastructure needed to effectively deploy AI. Because of their proximity to end users, distributed edge networks are critical to ensuring that consumers can actually use AI technologies at scale. Although some AI technologies will be designed to work on-device, many will need more power to run AI inference, the tasks that users ask an AI engine to complete.  Distributed networks are equipped to run AI workloads at the edge, to help deliver the low latency and high performance needed for advanced technologies. Cloudflare’s distributed network gives developers a path to rapidly deploy their apps globally without massive upfront investments. 

Inclusivity: Nations want their entire economies, from the small businesses, to research institutions, to non-profits and enterprises, to benefit from AI transformation. Serverless models like Cloudflare’s make it easy to get started. Developers pay only for what they use, rather than being locked into paying for expensive and unnecessary compute, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry. Our free tier allows developers to experiment, build, and even launch applications without any cost, while our pay-as-you-go model for increased usage removes the significant financial barriers that might otherwise keep advanced AI out of reach. 

Control over data: An important part of sovereignty is the ability to control your own data. We believe countries should avoid equating this type of control with data locality, focusing instead on integrating security tools that provide visibility and the ability to restrict access to data.  Cloudflare’s global, distributed network ensures that developers can experiment, build, and deploy AI-powered applications right where they are, setting rules and controls at the Internet edge.

Multi-modal, dynamic markets: Building new applications with closed AI models can make it challenging to switch models later, and can make developers dependent on particular providers. AI strategies must embrace diversity — developers should have access to a wide variety of both open source and closed AI models. Cloudflare’s Workers AI platform, with over 50 open source models, is model agnostic, helping to create a competitive, dynamic environment where developers can swap models in and out as better, cheaper, or more specialized options become available. Cloudflare’s AI Gateway allows our customers to connect and control all their AI models, regardless of vendor, in a single, unified, interoperable platform. 

Underpinning all of this is the importance of open standards that encourage interoperability. Open standards and protocols throughout the AI technology stack help prevent dependency, create dynamic and competitive markets, and create choice for governments and their developers.

Many countries have started to put their own mark on how to spur innovation in their markets, starting with large language models (LLM).  AI development to date has mostly centered around LLMs  trained on English-centric data, and increasingly, Chinese-centric data, leaving behind those who can’t fully access this technology in these two languages. Recognizing this gap, these nations are building and freely offering AI models trained on local language datasets that are fine-tuned to the nuances of their own cultures and languages. This approach lowers the barrier to entry for local businesses, organizations, and governments to create customized AI solutions for their specific markets. Open-sourcing these LLMs is to recognize that AI sovereignty is a means to an end. The goal is innovation, economic growth, and the ability to solve meaningful problems.

Cloudflare is now supporting these sovereign AI initiatives in India, Japan, and Southeast Asia. We are bringing these locally-developed, open-source AI models to developers around the world through our serverless inference platform, Workers AI.

India: India’s national vision is “AI for All”, which focuses on AI driving inclusive growth and social empowerment. India will host the momentous global AI Impact Summit in 2026, and a key element of showcasing empowering technological advancements that are accessible to the Global South. With its immense linguistic diversity, India is at the forefront of creating models that serve its hundreds of millions of Internet users in their native tongues. A cornerstone in this endeavor is the Government of India’s Bhashini, a digital public good platform that enables all Indian citizens to access the Internet and digital services in 22 official languages.

Cloudflare is now offering AI4Bharat’s IndicTrans2 model, a key open source language model that is also part of the Bhashini initiative. The model is able to translate text across 22 Indic languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit and even traditionally low-resourced languages like Kashmiri, Manipuri and Sindhi. 

You can use the @cf/ai4bharat/indictrans2-en-indic-1B model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/ai4bharat/indictrans2-en-indic-1B \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "text": ["What is your favourite food?", "I like pizza"],
    "target_language": "guj_Gujr"
}'

Japan: Japan has a very clear and expansive vision of AI development. Concerned about Japan’s slow AI uptake, the Japanese government aims to make the country “the world’s most friendly AI nation” by creating the ideal conditions for AI growth, both at home and abroad. A major initiative for Japan’s government is supporting AI that deeply understands the complexities and cultural context of the Japanese language. 

Cloudflare is offering Preferred Networks, Inc.(PFN)  PLaMo-Embedding-1B, a home-grown Japanese text embedding model, made freely and openly available. The Japanese government supported PFN through its Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC) program, which supports local LLM development through subsidized access to compute resources for training. The PLaMo Embedding model enables users to generate high-quality embeddings for Japanese text, which is helpful for building RAG-powered applications and semantic search use cases.

You can use the @cf/pfnet/plamo-embedding-1b model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/pfnet/plamo-embedding-1b \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  	"text": [
            "PLaMo-Embedding-1Bは、Preferred Networks, Inc. によって開発された日本語テキスト埋め込みモデルです。",
            "最近は随分と暖かくなりましたね。"
        ]
}'

Southeast Asia: As Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Working Group on AI Governance, Singapore’s ambitious National AI Strategy 2.0 aims to ensure that AI is a public good, both for Southeast Asia and the world. As a cornerstone of this strategy, Singapore is championing the development and adoption of SEA-LION, a family of open-source LLMs designed for Southeast Asia's diverse languages and cultures. The initiative aims to establish the nation as an inclusive global AI leader, ensuring the technology is both accessible and regionally relevant to its multilingual and multicultural populaces. The models are adept in numerous regional languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tamil, unlocking AI technologies for a significant portion of the Asian and global population.

SEA-LION model v4-27B is now available on the Workers AI platform. SEA-LION v4 stands out on the Singapore government’s leaderboard as its most powerful, efficient, multimodal and multilingual model yet. 

You can use the @cf/aisingapore/gemma-sea-lion-v4-27b-it model on Workers AI as follows:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/run/@cf/aisingapore/gemma-sea-lion-v4-27b-it \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "แล้วทำผัดไทยอย่างไร"
    }
  ]
}'

Singapore, India and Japan have all chosen to open-source many of their local language models, a strategy that champions an expansive vision of AI sovereignty. This approach demonstrates a crucial understanding: true AI sovereignty is ensuring you have choices. 

Supporting local language open source models is more than just supporting technology; this is a shared commitment to fostering an open, interoperable, and competitive AI ecosystem by empowering governments and developers to solve local problems, create economic opportunities, and preserve their digital and cultural heritages.

We are honored to support the initiatives of the governments of India, Japan, and Singapore on this journey. We believe that by putting their sovereign AI models into the hands of developers in their economies, we can help unlock a powerful wave of innovation that is more diverse, equitable, and representative of the world we live in. The future of AI is being built today, and we are proud to ensure that AI developers everywhere are at the forefront. 

Choice is the foundation of AI sovereignty. We’re starting with the models from India, Japan, and Singapore on our serverless inference platform, but it’s only the start. Come build with us! Take the first step for free on Workers AI.

As part of MSME Day, we wanted to highlight some of the amazing startups and small businesses that are using Cloudflare to not only secure and improve their websites, but also build, scale, and deploy new serverless applications (and businesses) directly on Cloudflare's global network. 

Cloudflare started as an idea to provide better security and performance tools for everyone. Back in 2010, if you were a large enterprise and wanted better performance and security for your website, you could buy an expensive piece of on-premise hardware or contract with a large, global Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider. Those same types of services were not only unaffordable for most website owners or smaller businesses, but also generally unavailable, as they typically demanded expensive on-premise hardware or direct server access that most smaller operations lacked. Cloudflare launched, fittingly at a startup competition, with the goal of making those same types of tools available to everyone.

As Cloudflare has grown, we have continued to highlight how our millions of free customers, many of them individual developers, startups, and small businesses, drive our network, company, and mission. They help keep our costs low, allow us to interconnect with more networks, and help us build better products.   

Over the last 12 months, we have put even more of an emphasis on supporting startup and small business communities by expanding free developer tools, which make it easier for anyone to build full stack, AI-enabled applications directly on Cloudflare's network, and investing in programs like Cloudflare for Startups, Workers Launchpad, and the Dev Alliance. For example:  

• More than 3,000 startups are receiving free credits to build and scale their applications directly on Cloudflare's global network using our developer services. 

• In 2024 alone, 122 startups in 22 countries were accepted into Cloudflare's Launchpad Program, which provides additional infrastructure, tools, and community support to help entrepreneurs scale their applications and businesses, including access to Cloudflare demo days. 

• Since 2022, Cloudflare has worked with over 40 venture capital partners to secure more than $2 billion in potential financing for companies participating in our startup programs. 

With the right tools in hand, entrepreneurs are turning ideas into real world impact, and we’re honored to support them. 

Cloudflare proudly supports over hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are using our services, including SaaS startups, health and wellness providers, real estate firms, local retailers, and global service providers. Here are just a few examples of these amazing new companies.  

Cloudflare is also working with our civil society partners in the Asia-Pacific region to help provide security training for new businesses. For example, in 2025, we partnered with Cyberpeace, a leading nonprofit organization in India, to host a webinar focused on building cyber resilience. The session included a live onboarding session, training on security services, and information on the most common cyber threats. Our first session attracted over 95 participants, and due to the high demand, Cloudflare is planning to host an additional in-person training session later this year. Stay tuned for more details!

It is incredible to see all the innovative ways companies are building new ideas with Cloudflare. However, as a startup originally designed to protect other startups, we know security remains one of the most pressing concerns for any small business. According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, theft of digital information has surpassed physical theft as the most commonly reported fraud for small businesses. In 2025 so far, Cloudflare has mitigated over three million Layer 3 (network layer) DDoS attacks targeting small businesses protected by our network.

This year, to help celebrate MSME day, Cloudflare is continuing our efforts to provide training and capacity building for our small business partners by releasing a brand new Cloudflare Small Business Security Guide. The guide includes step-by-step instructions that will allow anyone to better understand cyber security services and protect their business and customers from common cyberattacks. For more information, visit the Cloudflare for Small Businesses page to download the guide today. 

Cloudflare will always make robust security services available to any small business that needs them, free of charge. It is a fundamental part of our mission to help build a better Internet and our identity as a company. 

If you are building a small business and need access to better developer or security services, getting started with Cloudflare is simple, fast, and straightforward. Signing up for a Free plan takes only minutes and can instantly provide access to the tools you need to secure and accelerate your web presence and keep your small business thriving.