Sovereign Cloud Goes Live: The First Nation Appears
On September 20, the DFINITY Foundation held an X Space online event themed “Internet Computer for Nations.” It lasted about an hour, with around 2,000 people online at the same time.
The guest lineup covered all the key roles in this space: Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairman of Pakistan’s National Digital Management Agency; Ali Theyab Al-Zuhairi, Head of Digital Economy at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer of the DFINITY Foundation; and Matt Grogan, Co-founder of OpenChat.
The core breakthrough in one sentence: Pakistan has become the first country in the world to run a Sovereign Cloud Engine. Data remains entirely in local data centers, and government applications are built and deployed directly on this proprietary infrastructure via Caffeine.ai.
What’s already up and running is a nationwide public opinion complaint platform built with Caffeine, which is now expanding to more government departments.
Another highlight is the sovereign messaging app: built by the OpenChat team, iOS and Android test versions are already live. Chairman Munir uses it every day. Technically, a single container can support million-level users. In the next phase, plans include a full suite of national services such as digital identity (PakID), payments, super apps, and more—gradually shifting toward delivering public services through chat and AI agents.
The bigger picture is the UNDP–DFINITY collaboration—exporting this sovereign digital technology to more countries and organizations. Pakistan’s experience will be open-sourced and shared, and UNDP’s engine is already under testing.
With a first national-level example, the key data and applications of a country are now running on infrastructure that is fully sovereign. If you missed the live stream, you can replay the audio recording on X.
On September 20, the DFINITY Foundation held an X Space online event themed “Internet Computer for Nations.” It lasted about an hour, with around 2,000 people online at the same time.
The guest lineup covered all the key roles in this space: Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairman of Pakistan’s National Digital Management Agency; Ali Theyab Al-Zuhairi, Head of Digital Economy at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer of the DFINITY Foundation; and Matt Grogan, Co-founder of OpenChat.
The core breakthrough in one sentence: Pakistan has become the first country in the world to run a Sovereign Cloud Engine. Data remains entirely in local data centers, and government applications are built and deployed directly on this proprietary infrastructure via Caffeine.ai.
What’s already up and running is a nationwide public opinion complaint platform built with Caffeine, which is now expanding to more government departments.
Another highlight is the sovereign messaging app: built by the OpenChat team, iOS and Android test versions are already live. Chairman Munir uses it every day. Technically, a single container can support million-level users. In the next phase, plans include a full suite of national services such as digital identity (PakID), payments, super apps, and more—gradually shifting toward delivering public services through chat and AI agents.
The bigger picture is the UNDP–DFINITY collaboration—exporting this sovereign digital technology to more countries and organizations. Pakistan’s experience will be open-sourced and shared, and UNDP’s engine is already under testing.
With a first national-level example, the key data and applications of a country are now running on infrastructure that is fully sovereign. If you missed the live stream, you can replay the audio recording on X.
