Ukraine’s AI Sovereignty: the Beyond.pl Partnership and the Infrastructure Debates

The partnership with Beyond.pl shifts the conversation around Ukrainian AI from theoretical plans to real-world computing power. As Danylo Tsvok, Chief AI Officer at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, notes, the strategic focus is moving toward specialized systems: “Building local models is one of the top trends in the AI industry.”

However, the decision to use a Polish data center has sparked a heated debate regarding the role of Ukraine’s national infrastructure players.

The Value of Small Language Models (SLMs)

The collaboration with Beyond.pl (an NVIDIA partner) focuses on two high-impact use cases:

• Justice Reform: AI will assist judges in drafting court decisions. Rather than issuing verdicts, the AI automates precedent analysis and document preparation, significantly accelerating the judicial process.

• Diia AI LLM: A specialized model trained exclusively on Ukrainian legislation and public services. This focused approach prevents AI “hallucinations” and ensures regulatory accuracy.

The technological foundation relies on cutting-edge hardware. Dmytro Ovcharenko, AI CTO at the Ministry, emphasizes that the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence will gain access to NVIDIA DGX B200 and NVIDIA Run:ai. This is a critical milestone before launching a domestic “AI Factory.”

Wojciech Stramski, CEO of Beyond.pl, adds that in the current geopolitical climate, “the ability to create sovereign AI solutions fully controlled by the state is no longer optional—it is a strategic necessity.”

The “Why Not Ukraine?” Controversy

Despite the international success, Ukrainian infrastructure leaders remain skeptical. Maksym Ageyev, CEO of De Novo, critiqued the choice of a foreign partner: “You won’t find a single memorandum between the Ministry and a Ukrainian IT infrastructure company.”

His position highlights a core contradiction: how can Ukraine lead the global AI race while allegedly bypassing the development of its national cloud capabilities? Local players argue that state control should start with the “silicon” hosted on Ukrainian soil, ensuring taxes remain in the domestic budget and stimulating local engineering.

Technological Gap: Why Poland?

The primary driver for choosing Beyond.pl is the immediate availability of specialized GPU hardware.

• Hardware Scarcity: Ukraine currently lacks large-scale, commercially available clusters of latest-generation GPUs (like the Blackwell B200) required for training Large Language Models (LLMs).

• Infrastructure Ready: Beyond.pl offers an NVIDIA-certified ecosystem where model training speeds are measured in days rather than months.

Data Security and Legal Jurisdiction

While Beyond.pl is a highly secure, energy-efficient facility, hosting “Judicial AI” abroad creates a legal precedent. In a domestic data center, the state has direct physical access to servers and absolute control over Data Protection Law compliance. Any court order or law enforcement request is executed instantly, whereas in Poland, this might require international legal assistance.

Summary: Local vs. Global

Benefits of a Local Data Center:

• Control: Data never leaves the country.

• Economics: Funds stay within the Ukrainian economy.

• Latency: Near-zero delay for services integrated into the Diia app.

Benefits of the Polish Partnership:

• Performance: Immediate access to B200 GPUs currently unavailable in Ukraine.

• Scalability: Rapid expansion without waiting for hardware shipments into a war zone.