A Swiss startup is betting that growing concerns around AI privacy, data sovereignty, and cloud dependence have created a market for something that until recently might have sounded niche: a dedicated offline appliance designed to run artificial intelligence entirely within an organisation’s own walls.
Custodia, based in Lugano, Switzerland, this week launched Sentinel, a dedicated AI appliance built for organisations that would rather keep sensitive information off someone else’s servers. The box runs locally and is designed to operate without any connection to cloud infrastructure or third-party networks.
The company says that businesses are increasingly uncomfortable sharing confidential documents, intellectual property, and strategic plans with cloud-based AI providers, regardless of the security assurances those providers offer. Sentinel is intended to address that concern by keeping both the AI model and the underlying data on a standalone physical device controlled by the customer.
At the heart of the system is a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capability that allows users to load their own document collections and query them using natural language. According to Custodia, the appliance can ingest large volumes of internal information, including research papers, financial records, legal documents and corporate archives, and generate responses grounded exclusively in that material.
The company says working units are already in the hands of researchers, advisers and executives participating in early trials.
Among those testing the platform is Tom Brooks, chief executive of Inhalis Therapeutics and co-founder of Custodia, who said he used the system to analyse pharmacokinetics data and scientific literature in support of strategic decision-making. Brooks argued that while large language models are well suited to synthesising complex information, many organisations remain unwilling to expose sensitive research data to remote AI services.
The launch comes amid growing debate over where AI workloads should reside. While cloud-based services from major technology providers continue to dominate the market, governments, defence organisations and regulated industries have increasingly explored sovereign and on-premises AI deployments as concerns over data governance, legal jurisdiction and operational resilience continue to grow.
Custodia positions Sentinel as part of that broader shift. The company claims customers purchase the appliance outright, with no recurring subscription fees or usage-based pricing.
The startup also confirmed it has not taken external investment. Speaking to Resilience Media, Brooks said Custodia is “100% privately funded by our founders”.
Sentinel is currently available to select early adopters through a waiting list programme. Custodia said future versions will introduce agentic AI capabilities and a multi-user platform intended for institutional deployments while maintaining the product’s focus on local processing and data sovereignty.
