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For comment on sovereign AI, AI regulation, national AI programmes or getting AI into production in regulated industries. On a breaking story I reply within two hours during Dubai working hours.
01Facts
| Name | Prem Naraindas (pronounced Na-RAIN-das) |
|---|---|
| Role | Founder and CEO, Katonic AI, since 2020. Based in Dubai. Australian citizen, born in India. |
| Katonic AI | Australian company founded in Sydney in 2020, headquartered in Sydney with operations in Dubai and teams in Dubai, India and Manila. The platform runs inside the customer's own environment: their data centre, their own tenancy on a public cloud, or a sovereign or partner cloud. Customers in eleven countries across banking, telecommunications, government and industry. About 60 people. |
| On the record | Pilipinas AI with ePLDT (Philippines) and MODON (Saudi Arabia). Other customers are described by sector and country only. |
| Status | NVIDIA ISV Partner; the platform is NVIDIA Validated. Validated on HPE Private Cloud AI. Certified on Red Hat OpenShift. SUSE One partner. Featured on Cisco's AI ISV Showcase. Certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022. Frost & Sullivan Entrepreneurial Company of the Year 2023 (APAC MLOps). Investors: Artesian Investments and Boab AI. |
| Books | Own Your AI: The Sovereign Stack Playbook for Nations and Enterprises (with Vinod Bijlani, March 2026). Building an AI Center of Excellence: From Strategy to Implementation (with Ahmed Sulaiman, April 2025). |
| Framework | The Sovereignty Test: four dimensions of control, six statements, a score out of 30. First published January 2026. |
| Lead Green | A Katonic project Prem edits: a public index of LLM inference energy per token by model, GPU and configuration, with grid carbon for 194 areas and an open API. Released 19 October 2026, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23478909. leadgreen.ai |
| Recognition | The Australian's Top 100 Innovators, 2023 and 2024. Invited by France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs to represent Australia at the AI Action Summit, Paris, February 2025. UAE Golden Visa, ten-year residence in the specialised talents category, granted February 2025. LinkedIn Top Voice, since 2024. Advisor to the AI Industry Forum at Australia's National AI Centre. |
| Before Katonic | Global Blockchain Offering Director, DXC Technology. Head of Digital Sales for Australia and New Zealand, Tata Consultancy Services. Earlier roles at Luxoft. |
02Bios
50words
Prem Naraindas is the Founder and CEO of Katonic AI, a sovereign AI platform used by governments and regulated enterprises across Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and co-author of Own Your AI: The Sovereign Stack Playbook for Nations and Enterprises (2026), which introduced the Sovereignty Test for AI sovereignty.
100words
Prem Naraindas is the Founder and CEO of Katonic AI, a sovereign AI platform used by governments and regulated enterprises across Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and co-author of Own Your AI: The Sovereign Stack Playbook for Nations and Enterprises (2026), which introduced the Sovereignty Test for AI sovereignty. He was named one of The Australian's Top 100 Innovators two years running, in 2023 and 2024, and a LinkedIn Top Voice since 2024. He advises the AI Industry Forum at Australia's National AI Centre and holds a UAE Golden Visa in the specialised talents category. He is based in Dubai.
185words
Prem Naraindas is the Founder and CEO of Katonic AI. Founded in Sydney in 2020, with operations in Dubai and teams in Dubai, India and Manila, Katonic builds the platform that lets governments and regulated enterprises run AI they legally and operationally control: inside their own data centre, their own cloud tenancy, or a sovereign or partner cloud, with the models their regulator allows. It runs in eleven countries for banks, telecommunications operators, governments and industry, including Pilipinas AI with ePLDT and MODON in Saudi Arabia. Katonic is an NVIDIA ISV Partner, its platform is NVIDIA Validated, and the company is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022.
Prem is co-author of Own Your AI (2026), which introduced the Sovereignty Test, and of Building an AI Center of Excellence (2025). He also edits Lead Green, Katonic's open index of the GPU energy it takes to serve a million tokens. He was named one of The Australian's Top 100 Innovators two years running, in 2023 and 2024, and a LinkedIn Top Voice since 2024. Before Katonic he held senior roles at DXC Technology and Tata Consultancy Services.
03Quotes
Attribute to Prem Naraindas, Founder and CEO of Katonic AI and co-author of Own Your AI. Each stands alone.
Sovereign AI is a control question, not a location question.The thesis
Location is the cheap layer. Keys, model choice, update control, evidence and the off switch are the expensive layers.On what sovereignty costs
Sovereign hosting is not sovereign AI. A subscription you cannot leave fails the test in your own data centre.On sovereignty washing
Regulators do not want assurances. They want evidence they can read.On regulation
Production AI in a regulated enterprise is an access problem, not a model problem.On pilots
Ask any vendor four questions: who holds the keys, who could compel disclosure, who could terminate access, and what you do the morning after. Then time the answer.On procurement
You cannot own a platform you cannot read. Open source is a control property, not a licensing preference.On open source
Building an agent is easy now. Running it is the product.On agents, October 2026
Every AI system has an off switch. The interesting question is whose desk it is on.On the off switch, September 2026
04Photographs
Print resolution, free to use with the credit given.
Media: DD News, February 2025, interviewed in Hindi from the AI Action Summit, Paris · Kalkine Media, February 2021, Executive Corner · Sydney Start-Up Show, 2021, episode 13.