STACKIT
Schwarz Group's sovereign cloud platform; GDPR-compliant EU cloud and AI services.
STACKIT, the Schwarz Group's sovereign cloud platform, stands to become the deployment host for Cohere's merged AI models, after Cohere and Aleph Alpha signed a definitive merger agreement on 16 September 2026.
Last refreshed: 22 September 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
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European Tech SovereigntyBackground
STACKIT is the sovereign cloud platform of the Schwarz Group, developed from the retailer's internal IT infrastructure and taken to market commercially in 2021. It is headquartered in Heilbronn, Germany, runs only German data centres, and has no US parent or subsidiary anywhere in its ownership chain, letting it support EU ownership, EU data residency and freedom from US CLOUD Act reach simultaneously.
In April 2026, STACKIT won a SEAL-3 slot, the European Commission's top sovereignty tier, in its €180m six-year sovereign cloud framework, placing it alongside OVHcloud's Post Telecom consortium and Scaleway as one of three fully European-owned awardees. STACKIT offers object storage, compute, Kubernetes and AI-as-a-service, targeting German Mittelstand companies and public bodies that need GDPR-compliant cloud outside the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud oligopoly. Its parent's retail cashflows fund the platform without external investors, a structural advantage over venture-funded European cloud challengers.
STACKIT eyes host role for Cohere
Berlin's sovereignty conditions on the Cohere-Aleph Alpha merger require AI development and infrastructure to stay in Germany, conditions that, if enforced, would make STACKIT the effective deployment platform for the combined company's models. Schwarz Group, STACKIT's parent, is also the merger's anchor investor, tying the cloud and AI legs of its sovereignty strategy together.
That role remains conditional rather than confirmed. The merger agreement, signed on 16 September 2026, is still subject to clearance from Germany's Bundeskartellamt and Canada's Competition Bureau, and no published document yet commits the merged entity to STACKIT specifically over any other host.