TLDR: Google Cloud has announced a significant strengthening of its ‘Sovereign Cloud’ strategy in Korea, enabling not only data storage but also advanced machine learning and generative AI processing to be conducted entirely within the country’s borders. This move, highlighted at Google Cloud Day Seoul, aims to meet stringent data residency and operational autonomy requirements for Korean customers.
SEOUL, South Korea – July 8, 2025 – Google Cloud today unveiled a major expansion of its ‘Sovereign Cloud’ strategy in Korea, reinforcing its commitment to data residency and operational autonomy for local customers. The announcement, made during the Google Cloud Day Seoul event at COEX, Gangnam-gu, signifies that Google Cloud will now enable not only data storage but also comprehensive machine learning processing tasks to be carried out domestically within the Seoul region.
Jigi-seong (Chi Ki-sung), CEO of Google Cloud Korea, emphasized the strategic importance of this development. ‘Google Cloud is supporting customers for whom data boundaries are important to operate services in the Seoul region,’ he stated. He further highlighted a unique offering: ‘Furthermore, we uniquely offer a version that can operate only within the customer’s domain without consolidation with Google Cloud.’
This enhancement builds upon Google Cloud’s existing commitment to data residency, which has guaranteed data residency for Korean customers using generative AI features with Vertex AI since 2023. The recent expansion to include machine learning processing tasks underscores a deeper integration of AI capabilities within the sovereign framework.
The infrastructure supporting this strategy is robust. Google Cloud established its data center in the Seoul region in 2020, which boasts large-scale infrastructure including servers, custom silicon chips, storage devices, and advanced networking equipment. This region is also connected to Google’s global private network, spanning over 200 countries with high bandwidth and minimal latency, ensuring a resilient foundation for AI-driven workloads.
A key highlight of the expanded capabilities is the recent launch of the Gemini 2.5 Flash model in the Seoul region. CEO Jigi-seong noted its significant performance relative to its price, with many Korean companies already adopting it. He underscored the importance of Gemini 2.5’s local availability, stating, ‘The significance of the Gemini 2.5’s launch in the Seoul region is immense.’
Google Cloud Day Seoul, an experiential conference focused on AI, data, and infrastructure technologies, served as the platform for these announcements, bringing together developers and IT leaders to explore the latest cloud solutions and innovation cases.
Looking ahead, Google Cloud continues to innovate in hardware optimized for AI. The company previously unveiled ‘Ironwood,’ its 7th generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) specifically designed for large-scale AI inference, which is expected to be officially released soon. This unit is touted as the most powerful and energy-efficient among Google TPUs, signaling an ‘era of inference’ where AI models proactively generate analysis and insights.
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Globally, Google Cloud has been expanding its sovereign cloud portfolio, offering regional and sovereign controls across 32 regions in 14 countries. This includes partnerships like the S3NS Trusted Cloud with Thales in France, designed to meet the SecNumCloud standard, and collaborations in Germany and Malaysia, demonstrating a comprehensive approach to meeting diverse national data sovereignty requirements.
