Case Study
Sovereign AI at Marshall University
How Marshall University took ownership of ibl.ai’s full source code to run sovereign AI on infrastructure it controls — and to measure usage and return on investment across faculty, staff, and students before deciding how to move forward.
Announced at EDUCAUSE 2026 in Denver ·
“We’ve also partnered with a company called ibl.ai, and we’re going to use them as a sandbox for providing AI functionality to our faculty and staff and students, so that we can really understand the usage and also understand the return on investment of using those things.
We’re really interested in putting the right tools in the hands of our faculty, staff and students, and then measuring what that looks like to benefit the university and inform us of how we move forward.”
Dr. Jodie Penrod
Chief Information Officer, Marshall University
Speaking on the main stage of the EDUCAUSE 2026 Annual Conference
Full codebase
Transferred to Marshall
13,000
Students at Marshall
Any LLM
Model-agnostic, compared on its own data
Usage
Priced on usage, no per-seat pricing
What did Marshall University get from ibl.ai?
Marshall University runs ibl.ai’s Agentic AI Operating System as sovereign AI: the university received the platform’s complete source code and runs it on infrastructure it controls, instead of licensing a vendor-hosted tool.
On ibl.ai you own all the code and the data, so Marshall’s own IT organization governs access, security and model choice, and no outside party trains on institutional data.
How did the Marshall University partnership start?
The partnership was announced from the main stage of the EDUCAUSE 2026 Annual Conference in Denver, where Marshall Chief Information Officer Dr. Jodie Penrod described how the university is folding AI into its institutional strategy.
The work grew out of a summer workshop that gathered leadership from across the institution to decide what to add to, and what to drop from, Marshall’s strategic plan, “Marshall for All, Marshall Forever.”
The goal was to account for AI in teaching, learning and workforce preparation. Penrod framed ibl.ai as a sandbox: put AI in the hands of faculty, staff and students, then measure usage and return on investment before deciding how Marshall moves forward.
What does Marshall University own under the agreement?
Under the agreement, Marshall receives a full transfer of the ibl.ai codebase. That is what sovereign AI means here: the university holds the platform’s complete source code and runs it on infrastructure it controls.
Agent framework and orchestration layer
All APIs and supporting services
LMS integrations through LTI
Documentation and deployment guides
Licensing a vendor-hosted tool
- The vendor holds the source code
- Runs on the vendor's infrastructure
- The vendor sets access, security and model choice
- Sensitive data leaves campus to be used
- Priced per seat, whether or not anyone uses it
- Leaving means starting over
ibl.ai at Marshall
- Marshall receives the complete source code
- Runs on infrastructure Marshall controls
- Marshall's IT organization governs access, security and model choice
- No outside party trains on institutional data
- Priced on usage, not per seat
- If Marshall ever moves on, it keeps everything
Which AI agents does Marshall University start with?
The deployment begins with access to a portfolio of higher education-focused AI agents and use cases spanning the student lifecycle. Marshall will evaluate and prioritize the capabilities that best align with institutional needs.
Admissions
Transcript evaluation
Financial aid guidance
Academic advising
Tutoring
IT support
Can Marshall University’s own teams build on the platform?
Yes. Marshall’s staff and developers also receive the environment that lets university teams build department-specific tools, workflows and automations on top of the platform, without waiting on vendor engineering.
The agreement includes onboarding and hands-on training, so that capability stays at Marshall.
How will Marshall University measure AI usage and ROI?
The usage-and-ROI approach Penrod described depends on ownership. Every interaction on the platform is logged in the university’s own environment.
See who uses what
Marshall can see which agents are used, by whom and at what cost.
Compare models on its own data
The platform is model-agnostic, so Marshall can compare language models from different providers on its own data.
Pay for actual consumption
Priced on usage rather than per seat, the university pays for actual consumption and can switch models as pricing changes.
Why does ibl.ai put the agents behind the university’s firewall?
“Agents only become useful once they can see real institutional data, so they belong behind the university’s own firewall, running code the university owns.
Marshall can measure exactly what AI is worth to its students and staff, and if it ever decides to move on from us, it keeps everything.”
Miguel Amigot II
Chief Technology Officer, ibl.ai
Which other universities run ibl.ai as owned infrastructure?
Marshall joins a group of institutions running ibl.ai as owned infrastructure rather than rented software, including Syracuse University, which operates its campus AI platform inside its own cloud under a perpetual source-code license. Read the Syracuse case study →
About Marshall University
Marshall University is a comprehensive public university and one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in West Virginia, founded in 1837.
It serves 13,000 students, offers more than 150 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs, and is designated an R2 high research activity university.
About ibl.ai
ibl.ai is an Agentic AI Operating System that organizations deploy on their own infrastructure with full source-code and data ownership. It is in production with more than 1.6 million users across more than 400 organizations.
It is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and deployable to private cloud, on-premise and air-gapped environments. ibl.ai is family-owned and operated from New York, NY — a U.S.-headquartered, domestically-owned long-term partner, not a vendor that sells licenses and moves on.
Where was the Marshall University partnership announced?
In a press release dated October 8, 2026, following Dr. Penrod’s remarks at EDUCAUSE 2026. Every fact and quote about the Marshall deployment on this page comes from it.
Marshall University Brings Sovereign AI to Campus With ibl.ai, Taking Ownership of the Platform’s Full Source Code
Read the announcement — the press release, distributed by EIN Presswire.
natlawreview.com
Own your institution’s AI the way Marshall does
Take the full source code, run it on infrastructure you control, and measure what every agent is worth before you scale it.