Sopra Steria today announced an extension of its strategic collaboration with Red Hat to industrialise sovereign-ready embedded AI, spanning from the data centre to the most constrained field equipment. Announced on the opening day of Eurosatory, the initiative addresses environments where AI is hardest to deploy and matters most, specifically targeting defence systems, public services, and critical infrastructure. For Sopra Steria, this represents its first industrialised edge offering built entirely on open standards.

The collaboration aims to help organisations transition from experimental pilots to production-scale intelligence by addressing the challenge of moving from proof of concept to reliable field operation. Red Hat provides the open building blocks, while Sopra Steria integrates, secures, and operates them as a deployable, accredited system. The initiative brings the entire AI lifecycle into a single hybrid cloud environment.

Technology Integration

The solution leverages specific Red Hat technologies to create a consistent hybrid cloud environment. These components are designed to manage the AI lifecycle across centralised and edge locations.

Sector Applications

This collaborative initiative delivers an industrialised lifecycle for edge applications, enabling faster processing and supporting operational continuity where decisions need to be taken locally. The use cases span several critical sectors requiring real-time intelligence and autonomy.

Transport and Fleet Logistics

The technology accelerates real-time anomaly detection and predictive routing algorithms directly on embedded electronic boards within mobile transport networks. This capability helps optimise system availability by processing data locally on the vehicle or equipment.

Public Terminal Infrastructure

For health and security terminals, the solution enables secure data filtering and immediate diagnostics in the field. This maintains local operational continuity even when the terminals are disconnected from central systems.

Regulated Communications

The partnership brings distributed AI inference directly to low-power field devices and constrained hardware environments. This enables real-time processing while reducing latency for signal processing applications.

Agentic AI could assist €310 billion worth of European e-commerce transactions within the next ten years, according to a study by Sopra Steria. The research, based on a survey of 8,400 consumers across eight countries, highlights a significant market opportunity tempered by trust issues. While the technology holds substantial promise, 41% of Europeans do not yet trust any single actor to provide them with a shopping agent, positioning trust as a critical competitive factor.

The study identifies banks as the most trusted entities to develop shopping agents, with 27% of consumers considering them the most legitimate actors. This preference emerges despite the fact that 55% of Europeans have already heard of agentic commerce. The findings suggest that success in this sector will depend not merely on technological capability but on establishing consumer confidence.

Consumer awareness of agentic commerce varies considerably across the continent, creating a two-speed Europe led by northern nations. Awareness reaches 76% in Norway and 68% in the Netherlands, compared to 61% in Germany and 58% in the United Kingdom. In contrast, southern European markets, along with France (38%) and Belgium (44%), lag significantly behind in familiarity with the concept.

Online shopping frequency also differs by region, influencing the potential adoption rate of AI-driven innovations. While only 2% of European respondents say they never buy online, 36% of Germans shop online at least once a week compared to 19% of French consumers. The study indicates that AI-driven innovations are likely to gain traction faster in more mature markets where online shopping habits are already established.

European consumers primarily view AI as a decision-making aid rather than a replacement for autonomy. According to the survey, 31% want AI to help them decide more wisely, 23% seek to save time, and 22% want to keep spending in check. Expectations vary by country; in France and Italy, AI is viewed as a means to make better trade-offs, whereas in Germany, it is associated more with efficiency and speed. However, 21% of Europeans see no concrete benefit to the technology yet.

Willingness to delegate purchasing tasks to AI agents varies significantly by product category. The data shows that 45% of consumers would delegate electronics and tech purchases to an AI agent, while only 16% would do so for healthcare and groceries. Additionally, 74% of European consumers still report encountering difficulties when shopping online, suggesting room for improvement that agentic AI could potentially address.

Key Survey Findings