The Presidential Secretariat has officially directed the Ministry of Digital Economy to spearhead a pioneering pilot program for “Universal Basic AI” (UBAI), marking a significant shift in how Sri Lanka intends to manage its digital infrastructure. The initiative, championed by Sovereign Stack founder Chamara Somaratne, aims to bolster national digital sovereignty and curb the massive outflow of capital currently spent on foreign-controlled software and cloud services.
The directive, confirmed following two years of consultations with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake—who oversees the Digital Economy portfolio—and Senior Presidential Adviser Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, represents a strategic move to localize AI capabilities. Somaratne argues that the current dependence on international tech giants acts as a “parasitic” drain on the domestic economy. According to his estimates, Sri Lanka spends approximately US $600 million annually on foreign digital services—an amount that exceeds the nation’s yearly food import bill.
At the heart of the UBAI framework is the “Sovereign Engram” application. Designed to be installed directly on personal laptops, the software allows users to process up to 80 percent of everyday AI tasks locally. By bypassing cloud-based dependencies, the app eliminates the need for expensive subscriptions while ensuring data privacy through a zero-tracking, encrypted architecture. The platform is engineered for high performance; Somaratne claims that on a standard MacBook, the engine achieves speeds of 140 to 160 tokens per second—a five-fold increase over traditional open-weight models.
The rollout strategy begins with macOS support, with Linux compatibility to follow shortly. A Windows version is expected to reach users within the next two to three months.
To handle more intensive workloads that exceed the capacity of personal hardware, the initiative will utilize “PicoDC” edge nodes. Unlike the energy-intensive, hyperscale data centers common in the industry today, these nodes are decentralized, solar-powered units that operate independently of the national power grid. By co-locating these units with renewable energy sources, the project aims to create “Cognitive Power Plants” that provide compute capacity without the typical environmental or economic costs. While initial hardware will be imported, Sovereign Stack plans to establish “last-mile” assembly operations in Sri Lanka to foster local manufacturing and engineering expertise.
Beyond infrastructure, Somaratne is pushing for global standards in AI transparency, having submitted proposals to the IETF, W3C, and IEEE. These standards would allow users to verify the origin of AI models and identify if they were trained on copyrighted content, addressing a major point of contention in the current global AI landscape.
Somaratne warns that failing to reclaim control over digital tools risks trapping the nation in “statistical mediocrity.” By pivoting toward a decentralized, local-first model, the government hopes to ensure that the economic benefits of the AI revolution remain within Sri Lanka, setting a precedent that the founder believes could reshape the country’s technological future.
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