The Spanish Government has taken concrete action towards what it considers fundamental for the country's future: building its own technological capacity in artificial intelligence. The State's entry as a shareholder in Sherpa.ai, the Basque company specializing in AI and data privacy, represents the first significant move in this digital sovereignty strategy, as reported by xataka.com.

Capital injection with public backing

Sherpa.ai closed a financing round of 18 million dollars in early July. What matters is not just the figure, but who is participating: the Spanish Society for Digital Transformation (SETT), a public vehicle linked to the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Civil Service. This is the first time the Executive has directly entered the company's shareholding.

Informally known as the "digital SEPI", SETT is the mechanism the Government uses to invest in key technology companies. This round is especially significant because it was one of the last to receive available European funds; the deadline to commit that capital expired on June 30.

Who is backing Sherpa.ai

Alongside SETT, Forgepoint Capital, a Silicon Valley fund specializing in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence that leads the operation, is participating. It is no coincidence that a Californian firm is focusing on Sherpa.ai: Forgepoint had already invested in two other Basque companies in the sector, Maisa AI and Multiverse Computing.

Previous investors are also returning:

• Mundi Ventures, from investor Javier Santiso
• Ekarpen, the Basque Government's venture capital vehicle
• Allegra Holdings, one of the investment vehicles of the Losantos Ucha family, owners of La Rioja's largest fortune

A bet on controlled data

Sherpa.ai, founded in Erandio (Biscay) by Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria, has been operating for over a decade. It is one of Spain's most established companies in artificial intelligence, although the previous financing round dated back to 2021, when it raised 8.5 million dollars.

The company's focus centers on what it calls "data sovereignty": the ability to train and use large language models without information leaving the client's servers. It is an increasingly demanded concept, as no company wants its sensitive data circulating through external infrastructure while using artificial intelligence.

Its client portfolio is varied and includes Indra (which even came close to acquiring the company two years ago), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), Caja Laboral, Unicaja, and Prosegur.

An acceleration plan

Uribe-Etxebarria explained that this round "allows us to accelerate our vision: to develop and commercialize a safe and scalable artificial intelligence platform that enables companies and governments to harness the full potential of AI without renouncing control, privacy and sovereignty of their data".

In parallel, Sherpa.ai has strengthened its scientific activity. In early July it presented a study on how to train large language models with private data distributed among different organizations without sharing it. A message that reinforces its commercial proposal and points directly to sectors such as healthcare, banking, and public administration.

Why it matters to Spaniards

This operation is part of the distribution of European funds that the Government allocates to technology companies deemed key to strengthening Spanish digital sovereignty. In other words: so that Spain does not depend solely on U.S. or Chinese platforms for its digital transformation.

In recent weeks, the same public financing route has also reached Multiverse Computing (over 100 million euros) and Openchip. The message is clear: the Executive believes that the future of Spanish competitiveness hinges on having its own champions in AI, especially in sensitive areas such as data privacy and security. The question now is whether these investments will enable Spanish companies to lead globally in a sector where the pace of change is dizzying.