Cagliari, 23 June 2026 — At a time when the international debate on artificial intelligence is increasingly focused on digital sovereignty and the environmental impact of technology infrastructure, Xference was awarded the title of Sardinian Startup of the Year at SIOS26 Summer last Thursday.
The startup, founded in Cagliari, develops Italy's first fully private AI inference platform, designed to allow companies, public bodies, and organisations operating in regulated environments to adopt generative artificial intelligence models without giving up control of their data.
The recognition comes at a particularly significant moment for the sector. The recent decision by the US government to suspend access to certain advanced AI models through their APIs has brought a frequently underestimated issue back into focus: dependence on AI services managed by third parties can shift from a simple technical risk to a strategic vulnerability.
"In recent months we have seen a significant change in market perception," commented Andrea Pili, CEO and co-founder of Xference. "Many organisations are coming to understand that the issue is not only about privacy, but about operational continuity and technological autonomy. If an external service can be restricted, modified, or switched off overnight, it means that control of the infrastructure does not truly belong to those who use it. This is why we built Xference from day one as an independent platform, based on open-source models and designed to operate within proprietary infrastructures or in certified data centres on European territory."
Unlike solutions based exclusively on external cloud services, Xference enables AI inference to be run in private, on-premise environments or at data centres located in Europe. Models are installed locally and operate without dependencies on foreign providers, ensuring that data, documents, prompts, and knowledge bases always remain under the organisation's control.
The startup's approach is built on four key elements: full data sovereignty, use of open-source models, ease of use through a no-code interface, and an architecture designed to meet the security and compliance requirements of sectors such as public administration, healthcare, finance, and industry.
Alongside the theme of digital autonomy, Xference is also advancing a reflection on the real environmental impact of artificial intelligence — a public debate that tends to focus on the theoretical energy consumption of AI infrastructure without adequately distinguishing between the different phases of a model's lifecycle.
"Today there is a great deal of talk about data centres and energy consumption, often without considering that training and inference are two workloads with profoundly different energy and usage profiles," added Pili. "In this scenario, AI infrastructure should be read not only as an energy consumer but as a system with very different needs depending on whether the task is model training or operational deployment."
The technology developed by Xference stems precisely from this vision. Rather than focusing on creating new proprietary models, the startup works to make the best available open-source models usable in a secure, controlled, and efficient way, building the infrastructure needed for them to operate within organisations without compromising privacy, governance, or control.
"The challenge is not only to build ever-larger infrastructures, but to design efficient systems capable of making the best use of available resources. Europe has an important opportunity: to develop a model of AI that is not only competitive, but also sustainable and independent," declared Pili.
The victory at SIOS26 Summer therefore represents an important recognition both for the company's journey and for the growing relevance of the major "hot-button" issues in European digital and energy policy.
"Receiving this award is a source of great pride for the whole team," concludes Pili. "Over the past two and a half years we have invested time, expertise, and resources to build an infrastructure that we believe is increasingly necessary for the future of AI in Europe. We believe that true innovation is not just about developing more powerful models, but about guaranteeing organisations the freedom to use them without losing control of their data, their infrastructure, and their decisions — because privacy is non-negotiable and is not a bargaining chip," concluded Pili.
On 16 December in Milan, the SIOS26 final will take place to crown Italy's startup of 2026.
AI Private Inference Technology made in Italy
