Summary: As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in everyday life, concerns over privacy, data sovereignty and energy use are growing across Europe. Euria, a new AI assistant launched by Swiss provider Infomaniak, promises an alternative: data that never leaves Switzerland, models that are not trained on user inputs and a data centre that recycles all its waste heat to warm thousands of homes.
From AI enthusiasm to data sovereignty anxiety
Across Europe, people increasingly rely on AI tools to draft emails, summarise documents or translate sensitive files. At the same time, there is a widespread awareness that much of this data flows to large technology companies based in the United States or China, often under legal regimes that allow extensive access by public authorities. European policymakers have repeatedly warned that this creates structural dependencies and strategic vulnerabilities, particularly when a handful of US companies provide most of Europe’s cloud infrastructure and when leading AI services are controlled abroad.
In this context, so-called “sovereign AI” has become a political and commercial mantra. European Union institutions speak of digital sovereignty and the need to diversify cloud and AI supply chains, while national governments look for providers that can guarantee local control, strict privacy protections and compliance with European data-protection standards. The EU’s new Artificial Intelligence Act sets out a risk-based regulatory framework for these systems, aiming to ensure they are safe, transparent and respectful of fundamental rights. Switzerland, though not an EU member, is part of this wider European debate and hosts several initiatives that present themselves as privacy-respecting alternatives to Big Tech.
How Euria works: privacy by design, not by slogan
Euria is Infomaniak’s response to these concerns. According to the company’s own technical documentation and its dedicated portal for the assistant at euria.infomaniak.com, all processing, storage and hosting of Euria take place exclusively in Infomaniak’s data centres in Switzerland, without external subcontractors or transfers abroad. User conversations are encrypted at every stage, and the company pledges that prompts and files are used only to answer the current request, not to train its models or for advertising.
For particularly sensitive use cases, such as clinical notes, legal drafts or confidential administrative documents, Euria offers an optional “ephemeral mode”. When this mode is activated, discussions are not stored, no logs are retained and the content cannot be recovered — including by Infomaniak itself. This is explicitly designed for users who must respect strict professional secrecy obligations, such as doctors, lawyers, public administrations or researchers handling unpublished material.
Functionally, Euria aims to match the versatility of well-known general-purpose AI tools. At launch, it already supports voice queries and audio transcription, image analysis, translation, interpretation of PDF, Word and Excel files, web search and complex reasoning. It can also be integrated into Infomaniak’s collaborative ecosystem, assisting with email writing, working on documents stored in the company’s cloud drive and helping teams to organise projects. Practical guides, such as Infomaniak’s tutorials on using Euria in kDrive or in its webmail writing assistant, show how the tool is being embedded in everyday workflows.
Under the hood, Infomaniak builds on a mix of high-performing models, including European and open-source systems, but routes all requests through its own Swiss infrastructure. The company explicitly warns users that no AI is infallible and encourages them to verify outputs before relying on them in high-stakes contexts such as medical, legal or financial decisions. In that sense, Euria presents itself as a privacy-respecting tool, not as an infallible oracle.
Turning waste heat into social benefit
What makes Euria unusual is not only where and how it processes data, but also what happens to the energy it consumes. Infomaniak operates a new generation data centre in the canton of Geneva that is designed to recover 100% of the electricity it uses. All the heat produced by servers, cooling systems and supporting equipment is captured by an air-to-water exchange system and fed into the local district heating network.
According to the company’s figures, once the facility reaches full capacity, the data centre will provide enough thermal power to heat up to 6,000 homes in winter and to supply the equivalent of 20,000 hot showers per day, while avoiding the combustion of thousands of tonnes of CO₂ from natural gas each year. Infomaniak presents this as proof that, with the right design, data centres can support the energy transition instead of simply adding to electricity demand. More details on this energy model are set out in the company’s public information about its sovereign cloud infrastructure.
Independent researchers from Swiss academic institutions have started documenting this model so that it can be replicated elsewhere. Their work underlines that metrics traditionally used to evaluate data-centre efficiency, such as Power Usage Effectiveness, are no longer sufficient on their own; new indicators that measure how much energy is reused for other purposes are becoming just as important.
A European alternative in a contested AI landscape
The launch of Euria comes at a time when European leaders warn that the continent risks “missing the boat” on AI if it remains a slow adopter and continues to buy most of its technology from abroad. At the same time, they caution that simply importing AI solutions from established providers will deepen Europe’s reliance on foreign entities and could expose critical sectors to geopolitical pressure.
For governments, public services and regulated professions, the question is therefore not only which AI system is most powerful, but also who controls the infrastructure, under which jurisdiction the data falls and whether the provider can resist foreign legal demands. Euria positions itself clearly in this space: an AI assistant run by a company controlled by its employees, with data centres and staff based in Switzerland, committed to respecting both the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection.
Beyond privacy, the environmental dimension also matters. AI systems are energy-intensive, and their rapid expansion has raised concerns about electricity use and water consumption in data centres worldwide. By combining renewable electricity with complete heat recovery and dry cooling solutions that avoid the use of additional water, Infomaniak argues that Euria can deliver advanced AI services while minimising environmental impact and creating tangible local benefits.
The European Times has already examined the broader risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence, including the impact of deepfakes and AI-generated content on democratic debate and individual rights, for example in its coverage of Denmark’s digital identity and deepfake legislation (read the article here). In that broader context, initiatives that explicitly link AI deployment to human rights standards, environmental responsibility and community benefit are likely to attract growing attention.
Promise, limits and the need for scrutiny
Euria will not, by itself, resolve Europe’s wider structural dependency on foreign digital infrastructure. Nor does hosting data in Switzerland automatically eliminate all legal or technical risks. As with any AI system, users must still verify outputs, apply professional standards and ensure that their own internal policies on data protection and confidentiality are respected.
Nevertheless, Euria offers a concrete example of what a more sovereign and sustainable AI model might look like in practice: clear rules about data use, transparent hosting in a defined jurisdiction, integration with local cloud services and a serious attempt to address the climate impact of intensive computing. It also illustrates how smaller European players can innovate by combining technological performance with strong ecological and social commitments.
For citizens, professionals and public authorities wary of entrusting their most sensitive information to opaque systems controlled from afar, the emergence of tools like Euria suggests that another path is possible. The key question now is whether such initiatives can scale, remain independent and inspire similar approaches across Europe — or whether they will remain niche alternatives in a landscape still dominated by global giants.
How to access Euria
Euria can be used free of charge via a web interface at euria.infomaniak.com, without the need for an existing Infomaniak account. For individuals, a low-cost subscription to Infomaniak’s collaborative suite (my kSuite+) unlocks more intensive use of the assistant alongside secure cloud storage. For companies and public bodies, Euria is integrated into the professional kSuite Pro environment, which includes email, file storage, messaging, videoconferencing and shared calendars, all hosted on Swiss infrastructure. This offers a single environment where sensitive data can be created, processed and archived without leaving the European legal space.
As European institutions continue to refine AI regulation and to debate how to reduce strategic dependencies, solutions that combine privacy, technological autonomy and environmental responsibility are likely to play an increasingly visible role. Whether Euria becomes a model for others or a distinctive Swiss exception will depend on the choices of regulators, public administrations and users across the continent.
Keywords:
Euria
Infomaniak
sovereign AI
Swiss AI assistant
data privacy
GDPR compliance
Swiss data protection
digital sovereignty
European AI policy
green data centres
waste heat recovery
renewable energy
Geneva district heating
cloud computing Europe
AI and human rights
We acknowledge The European Times for the information.
