Back to home

Service

Sovereign AI & GDPR-Compliant LLM Infrastructure

Private, self-hosted, and EU-sovereign LLM deployment. OVHcloud, Scaleway, Hetzner, Mistral AI. Full EU data residency, no CLOUD Act exposure, audit-ready for regulated industries.

Who this is for

  • Banks, insurers, and fintechs regulated by ACPR, BaFin, FINMA, CONSOB, or DNB
  • Healthcare organisations needing HDS-compliant AI (France) or KHZG-aligned deployments (Germany)
  • Law firms and legaltechs with attorney-client privilege concerns
  • Public sector and defence contractors where CLOUD Act exposure is disqualifying
  • Scale-ups preparing for EU AI Act high-risk system obligations
  • Any European enterprise whose DPO or Compliance officer has blocked US-hosted AI APIs

What's included

  • Provider selection: OVHcloud (AI Endpoints, AI Deploy, AI Training, AI Notebooks, HDS) vs Scaleway (Generative APIs, Inference, H100 clusters) vs Hetzner (cost-optimised GPU) vs on-prem
  • Model selection: Mistral Large / Codestral / Pixtral, Aleph Alpha Luminous, self-hosted Llama 3, Mixtral, Qwen, DeepSeek, fine-tuned SLMs
  • Inference stack: vLLM, TGI, Ollama, load-balanced, observable, token-metered
  • Retrieval architecture: Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector, Milvus; hybrid search; reranking
  • Orchestration: LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, DSPy; eval harness and guardrails
  • Compliance deliverables: DPIA, Transfer Impact Assessment, Article 28 DPA template, AI Act risk classification, ISO/IEC 42001 alignment
  • Cost modelling: token economics, GPU hour forecasting, cache-hit optimisation
  • Observability: Langfuse, OpenTelemetry, Helicone, full audit trail of every inference

How we work

  1. 1

    Regulatory scoping

    Identify the applicable regulations (GDPR, EU AI Act, NIS2, DORA, sector-specific) and the compliance posture required: data residency, retention, audit, explainability, human oversight.

  2. 2

    Architecture design

    Provider and model selection, network topology (VPC, private endpoints, zero egress to non-EU), secret management, audit logging.

  3. 3

    Build & integrate

    Stand up the inference stack, orchestration, retrieval, and guardrails. Integrate with the client application and existing IAM/SSO.

  4. 4

    Compliance artefacts

    Write the DPIA, DPA, TIA, AI Act risk classification memo, and operational runbook. Handoff to the DPO / CISO.

  5. 5

    Operate or transfer

    Either operate the stack on retainer, or fully transfer to the internal team with training and a runbook.

Outcomes you can expect

  • LLM stack with zero prompt/response egress to non-EU jurisdictions
  • DPIA and TIA documents your DPO can sign off on
  • AI Act risk classification with defensible reasoning
  • Audit trail covering every inference request (who, what, when, model version)
  • Provider cost projections for 12 and 24 months
  • Inference latency and availability SLO baselines
  • A migration path away from US-hosted APIs if that becomes mandated
  • A compliance story your enterprise customers will accept in procurement

Pricing

Discovery sprint (3-5 days)

from €2,500

Regulatory scoping + architecture options memo.

Full deployment

from €25,000

Depends on scale and compliance depth. Typically 3-6 weeks end-to-end.

Ongoing retainer

from €2,100/month

Monitor, adjust, and keep compliance artefacts current.

All prices exclude VAT. EU B2B clients with a valid intra-community VAT number benefit from reverse charge.

Frequently asked

Is it really possible to run GPT-4-level quality on EU infrastructure?

Yes, in most use cases. Mistral Large and Claude Sonnet via Bedrock EU, combined with Llama-3 or Mixtral fine-tuned on your domain, covers 85%+ of use cases with competitive quality. Gaps are narrowing monthly.

What about the CLOUD Act if I use Bedrock EU?

Bedrock EU reduces but does not eliminate CLOUD Act exposure because AWS is a US-owned entity. For zero-exposure needs (defence, some public sector) the answer is OVHcloud, Scaleway, or on-prem: all EU-headquartered, EU-owned.

Will this be slower than OpenAI/Anthropic APIs?

For self-hosted Llama/Mixtral on Scaleway H100s: 50-200ms TTFT at similar token throughput. For Mistral hosted APIs: parity. For OVHcloud AI Endpoints: 100-300ms TTFT depending on model. Latency is rarely the bottleneck; auditability is.

Can you guarantee EU AI Act compliance?

No consultant can "guarantee" compliance with a law that's still rolling out. What I deliver is a defensible compliance posture: risk classification, documented controls, DPIA, monitoring, and audit trail. Sign-off rests with your DPO and legal team.

Do you work with our existing DPO and CISO?

Yes. The compliance artefacts are written specifically for them. I can also participate in cross-functional reviews and respond to their security/privacy questionnaires directly.

What happens if a model gets deprecated?

The architecture is model-agnostic. Swapping Mistral-Large for Mixtral or Llama-4 typically takes 1-3 days of work plus an eval re-run. Observability and cost models follow the change automatically.

Quick estimator

What might your engagement cost?

Indicative ranges based on a €700/day base rate. Final pricing depends on scope, compliance depth, and timeline, confirmed in the Project Proposal after a discovery call.

Partnership deals (reduced cash + equity) can cut the cash component by 30-40% for aligned early-stage startups. A service fee is always required.

Estimated range

€2,800 – €3,500per month

4-5 × €700/day

Active technical leadership: weekly engineering sync, architecture reviews, vendor decisions, investor calls.

All prices exclude VAT.

Let's discuss your project

Book a free 30-min discovery call. No payment, no deck, no follow-up sequence. If AI isn't the right answer for your problem, you'll know inside the call.

Aru Bhardwaj

Fractional CTO architecting sovereign AI systems for startups and scale-ups across Europe. Custom ML, agentic RAG, and secure LLM infrastructure. 7+ years turning complex data into production intelligence.

Malt
Upwork

Contact

Services

  • Fractional CTO & AI Strategy
  • MVP Development & Rapid Prototyping
  • Sovereign LLM Deployment (OVHcloud, Scaleway)
  • Multi-Cloud AI (AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI, Azure)
  • RAG Pipelines & Autonomous Agents
  • GDPR & EU AI Act Compliance
  • Generative AI & Prompt Engineering
  • Machine Learning & Predictive Analytics

Monthly playbook

Practical AI essays for founders and tech leaders. One email a month.

Tactical AI essays, monthly.

© 2026 Insightrix SASU. All rights reserved.Aru Bhardwaj, Fractional CTO & AI Strategist

60 Rue François Ier, 75008 Paris, France · SIRET 989 236 856 00013 · TVA FR42989236856