Beyond the Hype: Strategic Cloud Infrastructure Choices for Tech Startups Balancing Innovation, Sustainability, and Resilience

This thesis investigates the critical infrastructure choices facing modern tech startups, framing them within a complex interplay of technological innovation, financial sustainability, and an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape. The research begins by deconstructing the strategic dilemma between adopting "fashionable" technologies for competitive advantage and selecting "sustainable" stacks for long-term resilience and lower total cost of ownership. A rigorous economic analysis of core services from AWS, Azure, and GCP is conducted, comparing compute, storage, database, and networking costs to highlight financial trade-offs and the strategic implications of vendor-specific startup programs. The study then examines the implementation of a microservices architecture on Kubernetes, evaluating its advantages in scalability and resource efficiency against its inherent complexity and operational overhead for startups. A significant portion of the work is dedicated to the new regulatory gauntlet, providing a unified framework for achieving compliance with both the GDPR and the EU AI Act in cloud-based AI systems. It analyzes the Shared Responsibility Model and maps the AI Act's stringent requirements for high-risk systems—such as data governance, traceability, and human oversight—to the specific MLOps and security tools offered by major cloud platforms. The thesis culminates in a geopolitical analysis of transatlantic data flows, arguing that the EU's pursuit of digital sovereignty is a necessary response to the irreconcilable legal conflict between the GDPR and the US CLOUD Act. It critically assesses the "sovereign cloud" solutions from US hyperscalers, concluding they are "ringfenced" offerings that mitigate operational risks but fail to resolve the fundamental jurisdictional issue. Finally, it posits that true digital sovereignty requires a multi-pronged European strategy, championing native cloud providers who offer structural immunity, fostering interoperability through initiatives like Gaia-X, and investing in technological autonomy to resolve the "digital trilemma" and build a resilient European digital future.