Common Questions

What is STACKIT and who built it?: STACKIT is the sovereign cloud platform of the Schwarz Group (parent of Lidl and Kaufland), built from the group's internal IT infrastructure and launched commercially in 2021.Source: Background
Is STACKIT a GDPR-compliant cloud?: Yes. STACKIT operates German data centres and targets public sector and enterprise customers who need GDPR-compliant cloud services outside the AWS/Azure/GCP oligopoly.Source: Background
What services does STACKIT offer?: STACKIT provides object storage, compute, Kubernetes, and AI-as-a-service offerings, targeting German Mittelstand companies and public bodies needing sovereign infrastructure.Source: Background
Why does Schwarz Group build its own cloud platform?: STACKIT is a strategic play, not a profit centre; Schwarz Group's €130bn+ annual retail cash flow funds it to maintain EU data sovereignty rather than depending on US hyperscalers for its retail and AI workloads.Source: Background
Did STACKIT win the EU sovereign cloud framework contract?: Yes. STACKIT won a SEAL-3 slot in the European Commission's €180m, six-year sovereign cloud framework, announced in April 2026, alongside OVHcloud's consortium and Scaleway.Source: Background
How is STACKIT connected to the Cohere and Aleph Alpha merger?: Schwarz Group, STACKIT's owner, invested $600 million as anchor investor in the $20bn Cohere-Aleph Alpha merger. Berlin's sovereignty conditions on the deal would require the merged AI entity to maintain German infrastructure, effectively routing its cloud workloads to STACKIT.Source: Background

Background

STACKIT is the sovereign cloud platform of the Schwarz Group, built to provide European public sector and enterprise customers with cloud infrastructure, managed services, and AI tooling that complies with German and EU data sovereignty requirements. Developed from Schwarz Group's internal IT infrastructure, it went to market in 2021. In April 2026, STACKIT won a SEAL-3 slot in the European Commission's €180m, six-year sovereign cloud framework, placing it alongside OVHcloud's Post Telecom consortium and Scaleway as one of three fully European-owned awardees .

Schwarz Group, the parent of Lidl and Kaufland, invested in STACKIT as a strategic infrastructure play rather than a profit centre. Its retail operations generate an estimated €130+ billion annually, giving it the capital to fund cloud infrastructure without external investors. STACKIT operates data centres in Germany and provides object storage, compute, Kubernetes, and AI-as-a-service offerings, targeting German Mittelstand companies and public bodies that need GDPR-compliant cloud services outside the AWS/Azure/GCP oligopoly.

STACKIT now occupies the cloud leg of what analysts describe as Schwarz Group's private-sector sovereignty triangle: cloud infrastructure (STACKIT) plus AI model capability (via the merged Cohere-Aleph Alpha entity, in which Schwarz Group invested $600 million as anchor investor in the $20bn deal) plus retail demand at scale (Lidl and Kaufland workloads) . Berlin's sovereignty conditions on the merger, which require AI development to remain in Germany and infrastructure sovereignty to be maintained , would effectively make STACKIT the mandatory deployment platform for the merged AI entity if enforced.

How the World Sees Them

Berlin

Germany's Digital Ministry backed the Cohere-Aleph merger as a sovereignty signal and attached conditions requiring AI infrastructure to remain in Germany. If enforced, those conditions route the merged entity's cloud workloads to STACKIT, making Berlin an implicit guarantor of STACKIT's position as Europe's leading sovereign AI cloud.

Brussels

The Commission's inclusion of S3NS, a Google-Thales joint venture, in the same sovereign cloud framework drew accusations of sovereignty-washing. STACKIT's SEAL-3 slot is the unambiguous counter-example Brussels can point to, though the contested award weakens the framework's credibility as a genuine sovereignty instrument.

German enterprise customers

Mittelstand companies and public bodies gain a GDPR-compliant cloud option with a balance sheet backstop from Europe's largest retailer. The SEAL-3 certification and Berlin's sovereignty conditions on the AI merger reduce procurement risk, though STACKIT's service breadth still trails AWS and Azure.

US hyperscalers (AWS / Azure / Google)

AWS and Azure have no path to SEAL-3 certification under the framework's full European ownership criteria. Google's inclusion via S3NS is contested. STACKIT's retail-funded scale removes the capital-constraint argument that typically limits European cloud challengers, making it a structurally harder competitor to dismiss.