Second Front Systems (2F) and Cohere today announced the successful deployment of Cohere North in a live edge environment in the United Arab Emirates in under two hours. The deployment ran aboard an Armada Galleon, a portable, containerized edge data center, demonstrating that enterprise-grade sovereign AI can be delivered anywhere, at mission speed.
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Armada’s Galleon edge data center in the UAE, where Cohere North was deployed in approximately 90 minutes using Second Front’s Frontier platform.
Second Front, a public-benefit software company powering software for the free world, provides Frontier, the secure delivery platform used to deploy North. Cohere, the world leading sovereign AI company building foundation models and agentic systems for regulated industries, provides North, its secure and sovereign agentic AI platform. Together, Second Front and Cohere showed how sovereign AI can be rapidly deployed on customer‑owned infrastructure with full control, security, and operational integrity.
Sovereign AI, meaning AI infrastructure and models a nation or organization can run, secure, and control entirely on its own terms, has become a strategic priority for governments that cannot depend on foreign cloud infrastructure for their most sensitive workloads. Standing up this kind of capability has traditionally required months of integration work, custom hardware, and disconnected systems. In the UAE, 2F Frontier, Second Front’s platform for deploying software into disconnected, edge, and tactical environments, brought Cohere’s North platform online aboard an Armada Galleon, a rapidly deployable, containerized edge data center, compressing that process into a single onsite session.
“Sovereign capability does not need a year to stand up. This deployment proves it can be done in mere hours,” said Tyler Sweatt, CEO of Second Front. “What we demonstrated in the UAE, when mission-aligned companies partner together, is the model going forward. Real environments, real speed, real mission impact.”
“Enterprise-grade AI must be sovereign by design,” said Ivan Zhang, Co-founder at Cohere. “Cohere’s North platform brings frontier AI models into a customer’s own environment, with data never leaving their perimeter and no external points of failure. What we achieved proves sovereign AI can be stood up quickly and reliably. Working alongside Second Front and Armada, we’re delivering a new deployable anywhere model of AI sovereignty in a box and look forward to customer rollouts beginning later this summer.”
The deployment also underscored the role of edge infrastructure in enabling sovereign AI outside traditional data centers. “Galleons are built to bring enterprise-grade infrastructure anywhere it is needed, without a permanent buildout,” said Dan Wright, Co-founder and CEO of Armada. “Watching Frontier enable Cohere North to come online so rapidly is the clearest proof yet of what that infrastructure enables for partners moving quickly in the region.”
This successful deployment sets the stage for a full customer rollout of Cohere North later this summer, bringing a sovereign AI capability that resides entirely within the customer’s own borders and under its control into operational use.
About Second Front Systems
Second Front Systems (2F) is a public-benefit software company powering software for the free world. We eliminate the friction that slows innovation, enabling faster, more secure development and deployment of software across government and regulated networks. Built by national security veterans and backed by top-tier venture capital, our platform is trusted by the world’s leading organizations to cut deployment timelines from years to weeks. We move fast, solve hard problems, and deliver trusted capabilities where they’re needed most. Our work strengthens global security and gives the United States and its allies a lasting competitive advantage. Learn more at secondfront.com.
About Cohere
Cohere, founded in 2019, is a security-first enterprise AI leader building foundation models and end-to-end products to solve real-world business problems. We partner with organizations to deliver seamless integration, customization, and user-friendly solutions. Our all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy, and deployment flexibility across clouds, private environments, and on-premises. Headquartered in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere operates additional offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide.
The company has raised ~$1.6BUSD from strategic tech investors (Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit Cohere.
About Armada
Armada is the hyperscaler for the edge, delivering modular AI infrastructure from first deployment to AI factory with speed, scale, and sovereignty. For more information, visit www.armada.ai.
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