# About Akumi: why we exist

The best AI was built somewhere your data is not allowed to go. Akumi exists so that keeping data in Europe and using modern AI stop being a choice.

## Why Akumi exists.

The best AI was built somewhere your data is not allowed to go. We are changing that for Europe.

## Let every European organization build with AI on its most sensitive data, without giving up sovereignty, privacy or control.

That is the mission. The rest of this page is how we got to it.

## It started with a feature that never shipped.

A team wanted to put a language model to work on the documents that mattered most: contracts, case files, customer records. They ran straight into the wall every European company hits.

### The project went back on the shelf

Doing it meant sending that data to a US provider, and legal said no. The data protection officer listed the Schrems II problem, the new sub-processor to approve, the CLOUD Act exposure no one could wave away. The model that could have helped sat behind a door marked "not with this data".

### It was not one team

We kept seeing the same thing. The teams with the most to gain from AI, the ones handling regulated, sensitive, high-stakes data, were the ones who could not touch it. The best models were a transfer their compliance team would never sign.

### So we built the platform we wished they had

An OpenAI-compatible API served entirely in the EU, with the firewall, routing and audit trail that turn "can we use AI here?" into a yes instead of a maybe. Akumi exists so that keeping data in Europe and using modern AI stop being a choice between two things you need.

## Four things we will not trade away.

These are the decisions we made early and keep making. They are also the ones that cost us something, which is how you can tell they are real.

### EU-resident by default

Residency is not a setting you remember to switch on. The whole platform is EU-resident, and any path out is the exception, gated in code and recorded.

### Enforced, not bolted on

Privacy and safety are steps in the pipeline that run on every request, not a policy document you hope people read. Controls you can prove beat controls you assert.

### Drop-in, not a rewrite

We meet teams where they are. One base_url and the OpenAI client you already use, because adoption should not require a migration project.

### Honest about compliance

No platform makes you compliant on its own, and we will not pretend otherwise. We give you provable controls and the records, and we are straight about where your obligations remain.

## Built to make the mission real.

An EU-resident, OpenAI-compatible API, with a firewall, model router, Recall, cache and observability, each switched on per request and metered on its own. The platform is how the mission stops being a statement and becomes something you can ship on.

## Build AI on the data you could not before.

Create a key and ship on EU-resident models, or talk to us about what you are building.