Deployment models
K-AI supports three deployment modes; the choice is driven by customer context (residency, ops responsibility, regulatory constraint). All three run the same platform code — only the substrate differs.
SaaS (multi-tenant)
Hosted on managed Kubernetes in France. Per-customer Kubernetes pods inside a shared cluster, with full pod-level isolation. Standard ingress with automated TLS termination. Customer URLs are exposed under .kai-studio.ai (per-subdomain routing for the management and API surfaces).
The SaaS mode is operated by K-AI. No customer infrastructure is required. Onboarding a new customer creates a new K-AI Instance — a new pod, a new Postgres schema, a new vector index, a new storage bucket — all isolated from every other customer (see Security & isolation). Time-to-first-document is typically same-day once the connector configuration is agreed.
Data residency: France. EU residency available on request.
On-premise
Identical Kubernetes architecture deployed in the customer's own cluster. Templates, procedures, hardware requirements, and installation guides ship with the platform — see Operate — On-premise installation for the build-and-deploy walkthrough.
The on-premise mode supports air-gapped environments: bundled deployment scripts produce and consume offline Docker image archives, so a deployment in a network without internet egress is a supported path rather than an exception. Customers control their own update cadence and can pin specific platform versions.
Operations responsibility is on the customer (or the customer's chosen integration partner). K-AI provides reference templates, runbooks, and remote support.
Snowflake Native App (SPCS)
Deployed as Snowflake Container Services inside the customer's own Snowflake account. Documents live in Snowflake Stages, embeddings in VECTOR columns, management metadata in dedicated schemas. Data never leaves Snowflake — this is the architectural property that drives the choice for customers with Snowflake-resident document policies.
The Snowflake Native App is a regular Snowflake Marketplace listing in the customer's region of choice; deployment is initiated from the customer's Snowflake account. A Tier-1 logistics group runs K-AI on Snowflake Native App today.
The Snowflake mode is the most constrained of the three: it inherits Snowflake's resource model (warehouses, compute pools, account-level governance) and its operational SLA. In return it inherits Snowflake's compliance footprint at the substrate level.
Comparison
SaaS
France (EU residency on request)
K-AI
Same day for first instance
Outbound HTTPS to connector sources
GDPR-aligned; default for EU customers without specific residency mandates
On-premise
Customer-controlled (any region, any data center, air-gapped supported)
Customer (or integration partner)
Days to weeks (depends on cluster readiness)
Customer cluster must meet sizing requirements; air-gapped deployments use offline image archives
Required for highly classified data (e.g. secret-défense in the French defence sector), classified environments, and most public-sector mandates
Snowflake Native App
Customer's Snowflake region
Customer (within Snowflake's operating model)
Hours once the Marketplace listing is enabled
Customer must have an active Snowflake account; document estate must be (or be made) Snowflake-resident
Aligned with customers whose data policy mandates Snowflake residency (BFSI, large enterprises with Snowflake-first data strategies)
Next steps
For ops-grade depth — sizing tables, monitoring stacks, backup and restore procedures, upgrade paths — see Operate — Deployment models. For the on-premise installation walkthrough specifically, see Operate — On-premise installation.
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