UbiOps makes AI deployment secure and sovereign for Dutch organisations

UbiOps has been in business for 8 years. “We started as a data science company and developed AI models ourselves”, explains Jorick Naber, COO and co-founder. “In recent years, we have mainly been working on developing and marketing our platform, which allows organisations to safely and reliably apply AI at scale under their own management.”

Practical examples of UbiOps are diverse. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) develops its own AI solutions based on open-source models, such as language models that summarise internal documents. These run on the UbiOps platform in the IND's data centre in the Netherlands.

At the Supreme Judicial Council, they have developed an internal legal chatbot, allowing employees to easily search the internal knowledge base. This solution is hosted via UbiOps on a secure and sovereign Dutch cloud.

The platform is also finding applications in other sectors. Gradyent, a fast-growing scale-up from Rotterdam, optimizes heat networks using digital copies of physical systems. These smart models also run on UbiOps. Other customers include BAM Group, Bayer, BNP Paribas, and HagaZiekenhuis.

“What we see with these applications”, notes Naber, “is that they often involve organisations that want to keep control over their own data and AI models. We call this digital sovereignty. But often organisations are unable to both build and maintain the technical infrastructure. AI developments happen so fast. What you build today may be obsolete tomorrow. Our strength is that we've captured this in a platform that allows organisations to implement their AI quickly, while simultaneously evolving with the market.”

UbiOps has been able to further develop and market itself in part with the help of Rabobank. The bank provided initial financing through the Rabobank Startup & Scale-up Team in 2020, which was further extended in 2023. The collaboration began in the early stages of UbiOps. Fabian Groeneveld, Startup & Scale-up Banker at Rabobank, explains: “We got to know each other at YES!Delft, an accelerator in Delft where spin-offs from the Delft University of Technology with an innovative idea set up a company. We were impressed by their story. It's important that we as the Netherlands and as the European Union are conscious of where and how we roll out our data. Especially in the field of government, defence, or hospitals with mission-critical IT structures.

“The great thing about Rabobank is that they have expertise and are willing to take risks at the beginning”, says Naber. “In 2020 and 2023, UbiOps conducted funding rounds, led by existing shareholders and new investors. In both rounds, Rabobank dared to provide an additional loan. That's the prerequisite for success; sufficient financial resources to build a platform like ours. It takes an incredible amount of investment to bring it to the point where the market says: I trust my AI and my data to this. It's great that our platform is being used centrally to host AI solutions within the government. It proves that we're doing something relevant.”

Besides funding, Rabobank also offers startups and scale-ups like UbiOps expertise and access to a broad network. Naber: “Rabobank often sees trends coming earlier, because they can look at it from a much broader perspective across all their customers. That's very valuable to us.”

Mark van Kampen is a sector specialist in Tech, Media & Telecom at Rabobank. He follows trends and developments in the IT sector and provides input on policy and portfolio development at Rabobank. “We are in the eye of the storm when it comes to digital sovereignty”, explains van Kampen. “Europe is finding out that it is too dependent on foreign technology, particularly from America. This feels increasingly uncomfortable in the current geopolitical landscape. In an extreme case, applications in Europe could be forcibly shut down. We saw this recently when access to the email of Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was blocked. UbiOps' solution addresses the growing need to manage data and AI locally and to be less dependent on American cloud providers, for example.”

Naber adds: “Research by the Netherlands Court of Audit earlier this year also showed that we are highly dependent on those US cloud providers. Until now, we always did business with each other based on trust. But with the new administration in America, several unwritten laws and rules are no longer fully followed. Across Europe, and in the Middle East and Asia, the sentiment prevails: we can no longer trust that the world will continue to work as it did. So, we need to develop an alternative for our business-critical applications – which is often AI. That's where we help companies. This means that we no longer need to compete with American cloud providers. In fact, we offer something they cannot.”

For the future, Naber hopes that the Netherlands, but preferably Europe as a whole, can build a full-fledged counterpart to US cloud providers. “Perhaps a bit like what we did in Europe with Airbus”, he compares. “I studied aerospace engineering myself. There was always a bit of ridicule about how we did things together in Europe. Because the wings had to be made in one European country and the engines in another country and then assembled somewhere else. Incredibly inefficient. But it just works. I would love it if we could all organise that in the field of cloud and AI to as well.”

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