Sovereign by design: what it means for your data in the EU
Sovereign by design means your AI memory lives on a server you own in the EU, under EU rules, with no copies held elsewhere. Here is what that looks like in practice.
“Sovereign” gets used loosely in tech marketing, usually to mean “hosted in a region you like.” We mean something narrower and more useful: the data is yours, it lives where you can point to it, and you can take it and leave at any time. That is the whole idea behind intakto, and it shapes every technical choice underneath.
Sovereignty is about control, not just location
Data residency tells you which country a server sits in. It does not tell you who controls the data, who keeps copies, or what happens when you want out. A US platform can host your data in Frankfurt and still hold the keys, set the terms, and keep a copy on its own systems. The postcode changed. The power did not.
Sovereign by design starts from control. With intakto, your AI assistant Hermes runs on a server that is yours, hosted in the EU. The encryption keys are in your account. intakto does not move your data elsewhere and does not keep copies. If you decide to leave, you take the whole server, with every login and all the memory. There is nothing left behind for anyone to hand over.
Why the EU framing is not a footnote
For an EU professional, where data lives is a practical matter, not a compliance checkbox. If you handle client information in law, medicine, accounting, or therapy, that data is a responsibility you carry personally. Putting it on a foreign platform’s servers, under terms you do not control, turns a convenience into a liability the day anything goes wrong.
Keeping your assistant’s memory on your own server in the EU means the data stays under EU rules, close to where you work, and out of the hands of platforms whose incentives are not yours. GDPR is the floor here, not the ceiling. The point is not to tick a box; it is to be able to answer the question “where is my client data, and who can access it?” with a clear, true sentence.
What “by design” rules out
Designing for sovereignty means refusing a few things that are normal elsewhere.
No silent copies. Your memory is not duplicated onto intakto’s systems “for reliability.” Backups run nightly and are kept for seven days, on your server’s storage, encrypted.
No data as the product. Many services build a profile of you and monetise it. intakto sells hosting, not your data. Hermes starts from a blank page and learns only what you choose to connect: your messages, and optionally your email, calendar, and the routines you work in.
No lock-in through memory. Because the memory lives with you, switching the AI model does not cost you what the assistant has learned. You change the engine; the memory stays in the car you own.
The test of a sovereign system
A simple test: can you leave cleanly, today, and take everything? If the answer involves support tickets, export queues, partial data, or “we retain some information,” the system is not sovereign, whatever the marketing says.
With intakto the answer is yes. The server is yours, the keys are yours, the memory is yours, and intakto keeps no copies. That is what sovereign by design buys you: not a promise that you will never want to leave, but the freedom to leave without losing anything.
One plan, EUR 29 a month, data hosted in the EU, with a 14-day money-back guarantee. You can read more about how the memory works or what is included.