When Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its cloud services in 2006, it offered a utopian computing vision of agility, cost-efficiency and freedom from clunky legacy IT. Google with its Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft with Azure weren’t far behind. But as artificial intelligence (AI) ramps up demand on infrastructure, and governments crack down on data sovereignty, that utopian vision doesn’t quite look so utopian.

Cloud repatriation and digital sovereignty, once the concern of fringe sysadmins and European Union (EU) policy nerds, are now the quiet buzzwords of boardrooms and procurement teams. This is not just about where the data lives. It’s about who controls it, who profits from it, and who answers when something goes wrong. And in a world where compute power is increasingly the fuel of geopolitical and economic strength, those questions are starting to feel a little more pressing.

Research commissioned by Civo, surveying more than 1,000 UK IT decision-makers, reveals the depth of this shift. According to the study, 84% of respondents are concerned that geopolitical developments could threaten their ability to access and control data. Over 60% believe the UK government should stop purchasing cloud services from US providers in response to escalating tariffs, and 45% are actively considering repatriating data from US platforms.

While the findings reflect growing concern, they also highlight a strategic shift, with 78% of leaders now considering digital sovereignty when selecting tech partners, and 68% saying they will only adopt AI services where they have full certainty over data ownership. For some, the answer is to take back control. Cloud repatriation is gaining some traction, at least in terms of mindset, but as yet, this is not translating into a mass exodus from the hyperscalers.

And yet, calls for digital sovereignty are getting louder. In Europe, the Euro-Stack open letter has reignited the debate, urging policymakers to champion a competitive, sovereign digital infrastructure. But while politics might be a trigger, the key question is not whether businesses are abandoning cloud (most aren’t) but whether the balance of cloud usage is changing, driven as much by cost as performance needs and rising regulatory risks.

This came to a head recently with the US administration’s tariff campaign. According to Mark Boost, CEO of UK-based cloud provider Civo, since the announcement of new US tariffs, there has been “a definite shift in attitudes, almost overnight”. He says concerns about reliance on US hyperscalers have intensified, with people starting to think about de-risking from US-dominated cloud providers.

It’s a view supported by Francesco Bonfiglio, CEO of sovereign cloud provider Dynamo Cloud and former head of Gaia-X, a European initiative aimed at creating a federated and secure data infrastructure. Bonfiglio believes the trend is real, if not yet widespread.