AI, cloud and data professionals gathered at TechQuartier’s ÄpplerTime in Frankfurt to discuss what digital sovereignty means in practice.

The Frankfurt-based startup hub hosted its first community night of the year on 15 January in collaboration with Tech Show Frankfurt. The event focused on AI, data and digital sovereignty and marked the first joint initiative ahead of Tech Show Frankfurt 2026.

The panel discussion was moderated by Michael Marquardt, project manager for AI Startup Rising at hessian.AI. Speakers included Dr Red Boumghar (Celestical), João Galego (Critical Software), Tobias Weitzel (Confora Labs) and Thimo Groneberg (Polarise). Together, they shared perspectives from across cloud services, AI testing, critical systems and data centre operations.

Rather than framing sovereignty as a question of geography or scale, panellists focused on control, transparency and efficiency. Several challenged the idea that data location alone guarantees sovereignty, pointing instead to the need for transparency and oversight across AI systems and infrastructure.

Speakers also highlighted the need for greater engagement with regulation and standards-setting, alongside stronger technical expertise and openness around failure in AI systems.

The discussion underlined that digital sovereignty depends on informed choices and active participation across the full technology stack.

Many of the questions raised at TechQuartier’s ÄpplerTime will continue at Tech Show Frankfurt, taking place on 6-7 May.

ÄpplerTime is TechQuartier’s regular community event format, bringing together startups, corporates and technology leaders from the Frankfurt ecosystem.

Key insights from the discussion

• Digital sovereignty is about control and trust, not location alone
• Efficiency and optimisation matter more than scale
• Influence over standards and regulation remains uneven
• Control extends beyond software to hardware, models and infrastructure
• Organisations need to engage more directly with regulation and providers

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