BUSINESS MODELS
Three ways to take delivery.
The sealed stack underneath never changes. What changes is what sits at the application layer — and whose name is on it.
HOW TO READ THIS
One stack. Three engagements.
Every engagement rests on the same foundation: sealed hardware, the seven Substrate services, signed updates, and a boundary data cannot cross. The models below differ only in what runs above that foundation — a single branded product, a family of internal tools, or nothing at all.
That is deliberate. It means moving between models is a provisioning decision, not a re-platforming project, and it means the security review you passed for one applies in substance to the next.
Branded Appliance.
Your product, delivered sovereign.
BEST FOR
Software vendors, systems integrators, and primes whose customers demand the product without the cloud.
You have built an application your customers trust with their most sensitive work — and those customers are now asking for it without the cloud attached. The Branded Appliance is that answer. Your application ships as the face of the appliance, under your name and your interface, while Element 31 supplies everything beneath it: the sealed hardware, the Substrate platform, the signed update path, and the provenance record.
Your team builds against Substrate’s stable interfaces — inference, retrieval, memory, adaptation, evaluation — and never touches the parts every sovereign deployment needs but nobody wants to rebuild. We provision each unit with your application, seal it, and ship it carrying your brand. To your customer it is your product; underneath it is a stack an accreditor can review.
WHAT IT INCLUDES
- Your application preinstalled as the appliance’s single branded workload
- Full Substrate harness: all seven services behind one API
- Co-engineered provisioning: your release process joined to our signing chain
- Signed update bundles carrying your application updates alongside platform updates
- Your brand on the interface; sealed E31 provenance underneath
SPEED TO MARKET
Ship a sovereign, on-premise edition of your product without designing hardware, building a platform team, or standing up a signing infrastructure.
YOUR NAME FORWARD
Customers see your product and your brand. The appliance is the delivery mechanism, not the headline.
ONE ACCREDITATION SURFACE
Your application rides a stack that is already fixed, signed, and reviewable — the accreditation conversation starts warm instead of cold.
Team Appliance.
One appliance. Your internal applications.
BEST FOR
Startups handling regulated data, and internal platform teams at banks, hospitals, insurers, and law firms.
Most organizations do not need one application; they need a place where many small ones can exist safely. The Team Appliance ships with Substrate and no bundled application at all. Your engineers install the internal tools your teams actually need — a contract analyzer for legal, a records assistant for compliance, a research copilot for the lab — each one running against the same seven services and inside the same boundary.
Applications are installed through the appliance’s governed deployment path, so what runs on the box is always known, versioned, and reviewable. Workspaces keep teams’ data scoped apart, retrieval follows your existing permissions, and every operation lands in the same audit record. It is the shortest route from “our people are pasting sensitive data into public chatbots” to “our people have something better, inside.”
WHAT IT INCLUDES
- Substrate platform with all seven services, no bundled application
- Governed application install path: signed, versioned, reviewable deployments
- Workspace scoping: per-team memory, retrieval boundaries, and retention policies
- One API for every internal team that builds
- Signed platform updates on your chosen cadence
STOP SHADOW AI
The pull of public chatbots is capability. Give teams equal capability inside the boundary and the data-leak problem shrinks to a policy footnote.
MANY APPS, ONE SURFACE
Every internal tool shares the same models, audit trail, and controls — ten applications do not mean ten security reviews.
GROWS WITH YOU
Start with one team and one use case. Adding the next application is an install, not a procurement.
Platform Direct.
Direct harness. Nothing else on the box.
BEST FOR
Engineering-led teams focused on data security and cost control, with their own application stack already in hand.
Some teams want nothing between their code and the models. Platform Direct is the leanest engagement: the appliance runs Substrate and exposes its APIs — inference, retrieval, memory, adaptation, evaluation — and that is the entire surface. No application layer, no interface, no seats. Your systems call the harness directly and your engineers own everything above it.
This is the model for organizations that already run serious engineering and want two things from sovereign AI: data that cannot leave, and a cost line that does not meter. Frontier-class open models on owned hardware replace per-token billing with fixed capacity, and the minimal software surface keeps the security review as short as it can honestly be.
WHAT IT INCLUDES
- Substrate services exposed as direct APIs — no application layer installed
- The smallest reviewable surface: platform, models, audit, nothing else
- Fixed-capacity inference with no per-token metering
- Deployable on Forge, Czar, or Chassis hardware, or provisioned onto approved racks
- Signed platform and model updates, same chain as every other model
MINIMUM SURFACE
Every layer you do not install is a layer nobody has to review, patch, or trust. Platform Direct removes all of them but one.
COST THAT SITS STILL
Owned capacity replaces metered tokens. Heavy usage costs the same as light usage, so nobody rations the tool that was supposed to help.
NO OPINIONS ATTACHED
We supply the harness and its guarantees. Your architecture, your interfaces, and your product decisions stay entirely yours.
SIDE BY SIDE
The same question, three answers.
Each row is one decision. Read down the column that matches how your organization builds.
| MODEL 01Branded Appliance | MODEL 02Team Appliance | MODEL 03Platform Direct | |
|---|---|---|---|
| APPLICATION LAYER | Your product, preinstalled and branded | Your internal apps, installed by your teams | None — direct API access only |
| WHO BUILDS ON IT | Your product engineering | Every internal team that needs a tool | Your platform engineering |
| WHOSE NAME IS ON IT | Yours | Yours internally, E31 underneath | E31 harness, your systems in front |
| SUBSTRATE ACCESS | Full harness beneath your app | Full harness plus governed installs | Full harness, exposed directly |
| TYPICAL BUYER | Software vendors, integrators, primes | Startups and regulated enterprises | Security- and cost-focused engineering teams |