Qlik plans to invest USD $1.5 billion in Europe over the next five years and will become a launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, while also unveiling a new agentic AI experience through its Qlik Answers product.
The data analytics specialist said its portfolio of data integration, data quality, analytics and AI products will run on the forthcoming AWS European Sovereign Cloud. The new AWS infrastructure will operate as an independent cloud environment for European customers.
Qlik said the combination will give European organisations governed analytics and AI with data residency inside the EU. The companies aim to address regional rules on operational autonomy and data control.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will locate all infrastructure in the EU and will operate independently from existing AWS Regions. AWS employees based in the EU will run day-to-day operations. They will control access to data centres and provide technical support.
AWS said it will apply strong technical controls, sovereign assurances and legal protections in the new environment. Customers will retain control over access to their data, and AWS will not access or use customer data without customer agreement.
Qlik will mirror this approach for its own services on the sovereign cloud. Qlik employees based in the EU will handle Qlik Cloud operations, technical support, and customer service for tenants running in the European sovereign deployment.
The company will extend its customer-managed encryption key feature to the sovereign deployment. Customers will be able to manage keys in line with internal policies and EU guidance on data access and key management.
Qlik positioned the move as part of a broader expansion of its European compliance and certification footprint. The company is working towards German BSI C5 certification by early 2026. It also plans controls aligned with NIS2 in the EU, HDS in France and ACN in Italy in 2026.
The vendor aims to achieve ISO/IEC 42001 certification for AI management systems in the first quarter of 2026. It also aims to bring ISO 9001 quality management requirements into scope for the ACN pathway in late 2026.
Qlik has already launched a Qlik France Region on the AWS Europe (Paris) Region. That deployment addresses French data-residency requirements and reinforces regional-sovereignty pledges.
The company plans to make its European sovereign deployment of Qlik Cloud on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud available in 2026.
“Launching our AI, data, and analytics portfolio on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is a clear step for European organisations that want AI outcomes without giving up control of their data,” said Mike Capone, CEO, Qlik. “Together with AWS’s sovereign-by-design architecture, we give customers trusted AI solutions so they can move faster, meet EU requirements, and avoid lock-in, while we expand our European compliance portfolio, including BSI C5 in Germany and HDS in France.”
Agentic AI push
Alongside the cloud announcement, Qlik introduced a new agentic AI experience in Qlik Cloud. The feature is in private preview and appears through Qlik Answers, which the firm describes as a unified conversational interface across structured analytics and unstructured documents.
Qlik said the agentic experience uses specialised software agents that can communicate and execute tasks. The system combines large language model reasoning with analytical calculations from the Qlik analytics engine.
Users can ask complex, multi-step questions through a chat-style interface. The system then draws on trusted data products and documents. It generates responses that combine visual analytics with narrative explanations.
Qlik said the approach includes citations for document-derived answers and explanations of the logic behind analytical insights. The company said governed calculations sit underneath the interface.
Qlik Answers will appear as a side panel inside Qlik Cloud. The panel will maintain awareness of what a user is doing inside the platform and provide contextual assistance.
The vendor said the private preview allows organisations to test four main use cases. These cover collaboration between agents, combined narrative and numeric responses, traceability for outputs, and an embedded assistant experience inside Qlik Cloud.
Qlik is also building out its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. This will serve as another entry point into the agentic experience and expose Qlik’s engine, tools, and agents to third-party assistants.
MCP will allow external AI assistants, such as chatbots, to access the Qlik analytics engine. Those assistants will be able to work with governed data products residing in a Qlik-hosted tenant under human oversight.
Qlik said it expects MCP to reach general availability in early 2026. The company is currently collecting interest from customers and partners.
Brendan Grady, General Manager for Analytics at Qlik, said boards are under pressure on both performance and compliance.
“Boards want three things: measurable return on investment, faster decisions, and confidence they are staying within risk and compliance. The new agentic experience in Qlik Cloud, delivered through Qlik Answers, gives teams a single governed conversation that reaches analytics and vetted knowledge, with citations and controls. It takes you from a natural-language question to a chart and an explanation, with a clear next step in your cloud. Fewer handoffs and copies. Decisions you can defend.”
Qlik said the agentic approach underpins other parts of its portfolio. These include AI-assisted pipeline design, data quality and lineage checks, and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines that connect ingestion with action.
The new agentic AI features are in private preview for Qlik Cloud capacity-model customers on an opt-in basis. Qlik targets general availability in early 2026 and plans a phased rollout by region that aligns with underlying service readiness. The company said it does not plan price changes for the release.
“Like most enterprises, we are under pressure to move faster without adding risk,” said Martin Gries, Head of Data & Analytics, H. & J. Brüggen KG. “The hard part isn’t ideas; it is stitching numbers from BI with terms buried in contracts and policies, then turning that into action. A single, governed experience with sources and clear assumptions is the right direction.”
Qlik is showcasing both the sovereign cloud plans and the agentic AI preview this week at AWS re:Invent, with broader regional availability targeted from 2026.