It won’t be an exaggeration to say that we are on the cusp of entering the “AI Agent” era. Unlike your regulator chat engines, AI agents will be able to sense, decide, and act on its own. It takes a goal from a human and figures out the best way to reach it by pulling data, running searches, and triggering actions automatically.

Together, these agents form agentic AI systems, networks of autonomous programs that coordinate with each other to complete complex tasks without constant human input.

Simply put, we are entering an unbelievable era of innovation and ingenuity.

Unfortunately, there is a catch. We might be entering an era of extreme data feudalism

🔗AI Sovereignty vs Data Feudalism

Why do we use the term “feudalism” in this context? Back in the day, landlords owned acres of land and serfs worked it in exchange for access and protection. We have a similar scenario going on now with data. Big Tech are the data lords” and we are the serfs. Their servers are the new estates of the digital world, housing the information, compute, and algorithms that shape how billions of people interact online. The AI agents will be running on these exact servers.

Each interaction, prompt, and data trace flows through their infrastructure. That means your data, your ideas, and even the patterns of how you think are all stored, processed, and monetized in someone else’s data center.

You never truly “own” the agent. You’re simply renting access to it through an API. The model weights, inference hardware, and even your usage logs remain locked behind corporate firewalls.

The question is no longer whether AI agents will act on your behalf, but who it ultimately serves. If intelligence remains centralized, it will reinforce old hierarchies of control.

So, what is the solution here? How do we introduce data privacy and sovereignty in our AI Agents?

🔗Decentralized Infrastructure Changes that Equation

When you run AI agents on a distributed grid like ThreeFold, you own the means of computation. Your data, memory, and logic stay under your control. You decide where your agent runs, how it stores information, and who can access it.

In fact, ThreeFold’s ultimate vision for the internet’s evolution is the “Sovereign Agentic Cloud,” a distributed internet built for privacy, autonomy, and collaboration. A key component of this new internet is the “Agent Layer,” the cognitive and operational core of the whole ecosystem.. In this layer, every person will have one or more Personal Agents that act as digital counterparts, managing communication, workflows, and decisions while keeping personal and organizational data fully under control.

Each Personal Agent can coordinate with Worker Agents that handle specific tasks like research, coding, analysis, or transactions. They run inside secure, encrypted environments built on semantic search, private active memory, and zero-knowledge storage.

Plus, the Agent Layer will be built on the concept of Augmented Collective Intelligence (ACI). In this model, each agent learns locally, contributes globally, and respects the sovereignty of its user. There is no surveillance, no hidden monetization, and no black-box decision-making. The agents evolve with the group and reflect their values and protect their privacy.

🔗A New Internet Built on Sovereignty

The AI Agent era doesn’t have to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can build an internet where intelligence serves people, not platforms. Where privacy is built into the foundation, not added as an afterthought. The Sovereign Agentic Cloud offers a path toward that reality. An ecosystem where users own their data, control their agents, and interact in a truly private and autonomous digital world.

For more information, check out our docs.