Australia has no flagship enterprise LLM lab, so ‘sovereign AI’ here is about deployment: running a model-agnostic platform like osFoundry inside an Australian cloud region or an IRAP-assessed sovereign cloud. How that works.
dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC), and dgm has no completed client integrations yet.
This one is not a head-to-head. Unlike Canada (Cohere) or the US, Australia does not have an established, well-capitalised enterprise foundation-model lab. The strongest Australian AI companies are in applied or creative AI — Harrison.ai (medical imaging, Sydney), Leonardo.Ai (generative image, now owned by Canva) and Canva itself — not general-purpose enterprise LLMs. So for an Australian business, ‘sovereign AI’ is mostly a question of deployment: where the model runs and who can access the data, not which local lab made it.
What ‘sovereign AI’ means in Australia
| Element | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| Sovereign cloud | Australian-owned/operated providers (e.g. AUCloud, Vault Cloud) and hyperscaler Australian regions |
| IRAP | A SECURITY-assessment scheme run by ASD/ACSC — not funding; it assesses systems against the ISM and PSPF |
| Hosting Certification Framework | Government policy with Certified Strategic / Certified Assured tiers for hosting government data |
| Essential Eight | ASD’s eight prioritised cyber-mitigation strategies, in a four-level maturity model |
Note that IRAP is a security-assessment scheme, not a grant — it endorses assessors to evaluate ICT systems against the Information Security Manual and the Protective Security Policy Framework, but the authority-to-operate decision stays with the government entity.
Where osFoundry fits
osFoundry inherits sovereignty from the deployment side. osFoundry’s managed cloud pins data to the US, EU or Japan — it does not currently offer an Australian managed region. For data that must stay in Australia, the honest path is self-hosting osFoundry (BYO Cloud) inside an Australian cloud region such as AWS (Sydney or Melbourne), Microsoft Azure (Australia East, Australia Southeast or Australia Central in Canberra) or Google Cloud (Sydney or Melbourne), or running models locally on-device. Run your chosen model — via bring-your-own-key — inside an Australian cloud region or an IRAP-assessed sovereign cloud, and you get an onshore setup under a model-agnostic layer you can still swap if a better model appears.
Why deployment beats ‘a local model’
Because Australia has no established Cohere-equivalent, chasing ‘an Australian model’ is the wrong frame. The sovereignty that regulators and procurement actually care about — data stays onshore, access is controlled, the system is assessed — comes from how and where you deploy. A model-agnostic, self-hostable platform delivers that while keeping you free to use the best global models. Pricing for both tools changes and varies by plan and usage — always check the official pricing page for current figures.
Where dgm fits
dgm is an independent integration partner that helps Australian businesses adopt osFoundry — scoping a first use case, handling the build, and connecting AI to the systems you already run. dgm can help an Australian business deploy osFoundry into an Australian cloud region or sovereign cloud with the model of its choice. dgm is independent of osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC) and has no completed client integrations yet, so everything described here is a service offered, not a past result. If you want to scope a practical first project, dgm can help you map it out.