Data Residency for AI

AI moves data across borders in ways that storage controls alone can’t track. A prompt sent to an inference endpoint in another country, a tool call to an overseas MCP server, or a centralized log pipeline can each count as a cross-border transfer, even when the database never leaves its home region. Standing up separate infrastructure in every region can cost ISVs $5M+ per region.

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This whitepaper explains how data residency, sovereignty, and localization apply to AI, and where sensitive data can cross borders across training, prompts, retrieval, tool calls, and logs. It shows how Runtime AI Data Control keeps raw values in their home region while models and agents work with tokens, so enterprises can scale AI across regions without building a separate stack in each country.