An increasing number of countries are developing national strategies aimed at foster artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty and regulatory proposals aimed at framing the use of AI, primarily through a risk-based approach. The main goal of this paper is to emphasise that the regulation of AI risks is only one of the essential elements that need to be considered to achieve AI Sovereignty. Importantly, based on previous works of the author, the paper defines AI Sovereignty as the capacity of a given country to understand, develop and regulate AI systems, thus retaining control, agency and, ultimately, self-determination over such systems. In this perspective, the paper proposes a layered framework, called “AI Sovereignty Stack” to analyse which elements are essential to achieve AI sovereignty. These elements, which must be seen as interconnected and interdependent, are defined as “Key AI Sovereignty Enablers” or “KASE”. Subsequently, the paper applies the proposed KASE framework to analyze the case of Brazil, in order to investigate whether the existing policy choices and governance arrangements of the tropical giant can allow it to assert AI Sovereignty or rather lead to a situation of AI dependency. While stressing that Brazil has strong assets, including the advantage of building its AI sovereignty approach on its constitutionally—protected goal of technological autonomy, the paper concludes by emphasising that the country is in a situation of technological dependency shared by most countries, and particularly evident in the Global South. Lastly, the paper concludes by arguing that national governments should strive to revert their situation of dependency and reassert AI Sovereignty, to avoid a scenario of digital colonialism that is already fundamentally undermining their democracy, and development. To do so, they must strive to foster digital cooperation, building technological sovereignty and autonomy through the promotion of shared rules, research and development initiatives, and resist the easy appeal of protectionism and nationalism.