Data Processing Agreement for AI Inference

Last updated: October 2026

pursuant to Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)

Parties

This Data Processing Agreement (“DPA”) is entered into between the customer that uses the Nodion-hosted AI Inference service (the “Customer”) and

Nodion GmbH
Königstraße 27, 70173 Stuttgart, Germany
represented by its Managing Director Niklas Karoly
Registered with the commercial register at Stuttgart, Germany (HRB 770829)

(the “Supplier”). The Customer and the Supplier are each a “Party” and together the “Parties”.

Incorporation

This DPA is automatically incorporated into and forms part of the agreement under which the Customer uses the Nodion-hosted AI Inference service (the “Main Agreement”), including the General Terms and Conditions. By using that service, the Customer agrees to this DPA. No separate signature is required. A countersigned copy is available on request at privacy@nodion.com.

In the event of a conflict between this DPA and any other part of the Main Agreement, this DPA prevails with respect to the processing of personal data.

Terms defined in Article 4 GDPR have the same meaning in this DPA. Capitalised terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Main Agreement.

§ 1 Subject matter and duration

1. This DPA governs the processing of personal data by the Supplier on behalf of the Customer when the Customer (or a person acting on the Customer’s behalf) sends requests to models hosted and operated by Nodion through the AI Inference API or the dashboard playground.
2. This DPA does not apply to (a) the Nodion cloud platform (applications, databases, storage, DNS, CDN, email and related services), which remains subject to the separate processor agreement in the customer portal, or (b) inference that the Supplier routes to a third-party model provider. Those providers are subprocessors under the platform processor agreement, not under this DPA.
3. The duration of the processing is the term of the Main Agreement. This DPA ends when the Main Agreement ends, without prejudice to provisions that must survive in order to protect personal data (including confidentiality, deletion of residual metadata, and audit cooperation for the statutory limitation period).

§ 2 Roles

1. Where the Customer determines the purposes and means of the processing, the Customer is the controller and the Supplier is the processor.
2. Where the Customer processes personal data on behalf of a third-party controller (for example as an AI gateway, reseller or integrator), the Customer is the processor and the Supplier is the sub-processor. The Customer warrants that it is authorised by the relevant controller to appoint the Supplier as sub-processor and to give the instructions set out in this DPA.
3. In both cases the Supplier processes personal data only on documented instructions, which are this DPA, the Main Agreement, and the Customer’s use of the service (including the selected model and request payload), unless Union or Member State law requires otherwise.

§ 3 Nature and purpose of the processing

The object, nature and purpose of the processing, the types of personal data and the categories of data subjects are set out in Appendix 1.

§ 4 Zero data retention and no training

1. Zero data retention. Customer API Data (prompts, inputs, files, messages and generated outputs) is processed only for the time needed to perform the requested inference and return the response. The Supplier does not log or otherwise persist Customer API Data after the request, does not retain it for abuse monitoring, and does not write it to backups. After the request has completed, Customer API Data cannot be returned or recovered by the Supplier.
2. Transient runtime state that exists only while a request is being served is permitted and is discarded when the request ends. That includes in-memory state and, for file-based inference such as OCR or speech, temporary local files that are deleted when the request ends. This is not a store of Customer API Data.
3. Operational metadata that does not include Customer API Data, in particular timestamps, request identifiers, model identifier, HTTP status, token or unit counts, latency, and the billed amount, is retained as billing and security history for the term of the Main Agreement. Deleting a project does not end the Main Agreement and does not delete that history while the account continues. After the Main Agreement ends, the Customer may choose return (export) or deletion of operational metadata, as set out in § 12. Metadata that forms part of a statutory commercial or tax record (in particular invoices and the usage records that substantiate them) is retained only for that purpose for the applicable statutory period.
4. No training. The Supplier shall not use Customer API Data or Customer Data to train, fine-tune, evaluate or otherwise improve any artificial intelligence model, whether operated by the Supplier or by a third party.

§ 5 Location of processing; no third-country transfer

1. Processing of Customer API Data under this DPA takes place exclusively in the European Union or the European Economic Area.
2. The Supplier shall not transfer Customer API Data to a third country or an international organisation without the Customer’s prior written consent and without an Art. 44 et seq. GDPR transfer mechanism. The infrastructure used for this service is listed in Appendix 3 and is located in the EU/EEA.
3. If Union or Member State law requires processing, including a disclosure that would involve a transfer, the Supplier shall inform the Customer before that processing as set out in § 9 (4), unless the law prohibits that notice on important public-interest grounds.

§ 6 Technical and organisational measures

1. The Supplier implements technical and organisational measures that ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk, in accordance with Art. 32 GDPR. The measures in force are set out in Appendix 2.
2. The measures are subject to technical progress. The Supplier may replace individual measures with equivalent or stronger ones, provided the level of protection in Appendix 2 is not reduced. Material changes are documented.

§ 7 Duties of the Supplier

The Supplier shall comply with the principles of proper data processing and in particular:

1. Privacy contact. The Supplier is not required to appoint a data protection officer under § 38 BDSG. Enquiries go to privacy@nodion.com.
2. Confidentiality. Only persons bound to confidentiality and instructed in the relevant data-protection rules may process personal data under this DPA. The duty continues after the Main Agreement ends.
3. Data-subject rights. Taking into account the nature of the processing (zero data retention of Customer API Data), the Supplier shall reasonably assist the Customer with requests under Chapter III GDPR. Requests are typically handled within five business days. If a data subject contacts the Supplier directly, the Supplier forwards the request to the Customer without responding, unless the Customer instructs otherwise or the law requires a response.
4. Personal data breach. The Supplier shall inform the Customer without undue delay and at the latest within 48 hours after becoming aware of a personal data breach affecting the Customer’s personal data. The notice includes, as far as possible: the nature of the breach; the categories and approximate number of data subjects and records concerned; the privacy contact (privacy@nodion.com); the likely consequences; and the measures taken or proposed.
5. Supervisory authority. The Supplier shall, on request, cooperate with the competent supervisory authority in the performance of its tasks, and shall inform the Customer of inspections that relate to this DPA unless a statutory or judicial duty of secrecy applies.
6. Articles 32 to 36. The Supplier shall assist the Customer, taking into account the nature of the processing and the information available to the Supplier, in complying with Arts. 32 to 36 GDPR, including security of processing, breach communication, data-protection impact assessments and prior consultation.

§ 8 Duties of the Customer

1. The Customer is responsible for the lawfulness of the personal data it submits, including a legal basis, any required notices under Arts. 13 and 14 GDPR, and, where the Customer acts as a processor, the authorisation of the relevant controller.
2. The Customer decides which content to send. Special categories of personal data (Art. 9 GDPR) and data relating to criminal convictions (Art. 10 GDPR) may be submitted only if the Customer has a valid legal basis and has assessed the residual risk of inference processing. The Supplier does not inspect request content.
3. The Customer names a privacy contact on request and informs the Supplier without delay of errors or irregularities it detects in the processing.

§ 9 Instructions

1. The Supplier and any person acting under its authority shall process personal data only within the Main Agreement and the Customer’s instructions, unless Union or Member State law requires otherwise (Art. 28 (3) (a) GDPR).
2. Instructions are this DPA and the Customer’s use of the service. Additional instructions must be given in text form. Oral instructions are confirmed in text form without delay. Instructions that go beyond the agreed service are a request for a change of performance.
3. If the Supplier believes an instruction infringes the GDPR or other Union or Member State data-protection law, it shall inform the Customer immediately and may suspend that instruction until the Customer confirms or amends it.
4. If Union or Member State law to which the Supplier is subject requires the Supplier to process personal data other than on the Customer’s instructions, the Supplier shall inform the Customer of that legal requirement before processing, unless the law prohibits such information on important grounds of public interest (Art. 28 (3) (a) GDPR).

§ 10 Sub-processors

1. Sub-processing means engaging another processor for processing that relates directly to this DPA. Ancillary services without specific connection to the inference (for example telecommunications, postal services, office IT, or facility services) are not sub-processing under this clause, without prejudice to the Supplier’s duty to maintain an appropriate level of protection.
2. The Customer gives general authorisation (Art. 28 (2) sentence 2 GDPR) to the sub-processors listed in Appendix 3.
3. The Supplier shall impose on each sub-processor data-protection obligations that are no less protective than those in this DPA, to the extent applicable to the sub-processor’s services. The Supplier remains fully liable to the Customer for the sub-processor’s performance.
4. The Supplier shall notify the Customer of any intended addition or replacement of a sub-processor at least 30 days before that party first processes personal data under this DPA, by publishing the updated Appendix 3 at this URL and, where the Customer has an account, by email to the account contact and/or a notice in the customer portal. The Customer may object on reasonable data-protection grounds within that period. If the Parties cannot resolve the objection, the Customer may terminate the affected service.
5. The 30-day period may be shortened only where a delay would be unreasonable for security or legal reasons. The Supplier shall inform the Customer as soon as possible in that case.
6. Appendix 3 of this DPA is independent of the sub-processor list in the platform processor agreement (14-day objection). A change on one list is not notice under the other.

§ 11 Audit

1. The Supplier shall make available to the Customer all information reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance with this DPA.
2. Compliance is demonstrated in particular by (a) ISO/IEC 27001 certificates of the infrastructure partners in Appendix 3, (b) a written confirmation by the Supplier that the measures in Appendix 2 are in place, and (c) additional documents on specific questions. The Supplier itself does not currently hold an external certification; ISO/IEC 27001 is planned.
3. The Customer may, in cooperation with the Supplier, perform further checks under Art. 28 (3) (h) GDPR to a reasonable extent. Checks are carried out in the first instance by written enquiry, documentation and, where useful, online meetings. The Customer may use a third party that is not a direct competitor of the Supplier. Checks are limited to one per calendar year, plus ad-hoc checks where there are concrete indications of a breach. The Customer bears its own costs.
4. Where that remote evidence is insufficient to demonstrate compliance, the Customer may, on reasonable notice and during ordinary business hours, carry out an inspection, including at the Supplier’s premises or, to the extent the relevant partner in Appendix 3 permits, at that partner’s site, limited to systems used for this DPA. The Supplier shall contribute to such inspections (Art. 28 (3) (h) GDPR). The limits in § 11 (3) apply.

§ 12 Deletion

1. Because Customer API Data is not retained, there is nothing to return or delete after a request. The Customer acknowledges that recovery of Customer API Data by the Supplier is technically impossible.
2. After the Main Agreement ends, the Customer may choose, in text form to privacy@nodion.com, return (export) or deletion of operational metadata. In either case the Supplier also deletes existing copies that are not subject to a statutory retention duty (Art. 28 (3) (g) GDPR). The Supplier carries out a complete request within 30 days. If the Customer does not choose, the Supplier retains operational metadata only as statutory commercial and tax records (in particular invoices and the usage records that substantiate them) and processes them only for that purpose.

§ 13 Remuneration

1. For support under §§ 7, 11 or 12 that goes beyond the Supplier’s statutory duties, the Supplier may charge EUR 200.00 net per hour.
2. No fee is due for work that is necessary because the Supplier itself breached data-protection law.

§ 14 Other terms

14.1 Governing law and venue

The laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply. The exclusive place of jurisdiction is Stuttgart, Germany, if the Customer is a merchant, a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law. The Supplier may also sue at the Customer’s general venue.

14.2 Liability

The liability clause of the Main Agreement applies to processing under this DPA. Statutory liability under Art. 82 GDPR remains unaffected. Each Party bears administrative fines under Art. 83 GDPR imposed on that Party.

14.3 Third-party process

If Customer API Data or metadata held by the Supplier is jeopardised by seizure, confiscation, insolvency or similar measures of a third party, the Supplier shall inform the Customer without delay and shall inform the authority that sovereignty over the data lies with the Customer (or the relevant controller).

14.4 Amendments

The Supplier may update this DPA by publishing a new version at this URL. Material changes take effect 30 days after publication, unless a shorter period is required by law. Continued use of the service after that date constitutes acceptance. Other amendments require text form.

14.5 Severability

If any provision is invalid, the remaining provisions stay in force.

Appendix 1 - Description of the processing

Subject matter and purpose

The Supplier receives authenticated API or playground requests, performs inference on models that Nodion hosts, and returns the model output. The purpose is the provision of that inference, including authentication, routing, metering and billing.

Nature of the processing

Receipt, transmission, ephemeral processing in memory and, where a file-based request requires it, on temporary local disk deleted at the end of the request, generation of outputs, and deletion by non-retention. No storage of Customer API Data after the request.

Duration

Customer API Data: the duration of the individual request. Operational metadata: the term of the Main Agreement, then return or deletion as set out in §§ 4 (3) and 12, plus any statutory retention period.

Customer API Data (determined by the Customer)

Any personal data contained in prompts, messages, instructions, files, images, audio, embeddings input, structured payloads, and in the generated outputs. The Supplier has no knowledge of the specific data submitted.

Operational metadata (processed by the Supplier)

Request identifier, timestamp, model identifier, HTTP status, token or unit counts, latency, error class, billed amount and currency, API-key identifier, and project identifier.

Account data

Where the Customer has a Nodion account, name, business contact details and billing data of authorised users are processed by Nodion as a controller under the Privacy Policy, not under this DPA.

Categories of data subjects

• Authorised users of the Customer (employees, contractors, API-key holders);
• persons whose personal data the Customer (or its own customers) includes in Customer API Data, including end users, customers, employees or other third parties referenced in inputs or reproduced in outputs.

Appendix 2 - Technical and organisational measures

Last updated: October 2026

Allocation. Nodion does not operate its own data centres. Physical security, power, cooling and network of the sites in Appendix 3 are provided by those partners and evidenced by their certifications (in particular ISO/IEC 27001). Application controls are implemented by Nodion.

Confidentiality

• TLS 1.2 or higher in transit.
• Customer API Data is not written to object storage, backups or the request log. The request log stores only operational metadata (Appendix 1). Temporary local files for file-based inference (OCR, speech) exist only for the request and are deleted afterwards.
• Production access only through personal accounts with mandatory two-factor authentication; SSH by key only; role-based access, least privilege; accounts revoked on departure.
• Administrative access is logged and retained for 90 days.
• Inference workloads for hosted models run on dedicated GPU hosts that are not shared with customer application VMs.

Integrity

• Security-relevant actions are logged with timestamp and actor.
• HTTPS and signed API tokens for the inference API.

Availability

• Monitoring and alerting for availability, capacity and security events.
• Because Customer API Data is not stored, there is no backup or restore of prompts or outputs.

Review

• Internal vulnerability scans, code review, and external penetration tests as needed.
• Staff confidentiality undertakings and data-protection training.
• Documented incident process; Customer notification within 48 hours of becoming aware.
• Written processor agreements with the sub-processors in Appendix 3.

Appendix 3 - Sub-processors

The following processors are engaged for Nodion-hosted inference. Region-specific GPU hosts are used only for the models that actually run there. Changes follow § 10.

Sub-processor	Purpose	Location
Leaseweb Deutschland GmbH Kleyerstraße 79, 60326 Frankfurt am Main, Germany	Server and network infrastructure for the inference API, authentication and operational metadata. GPU hosts in Germany where a hosted model runs there. No intended access to Customer API Data beyond hosting the systems Nodion operates.	EU (DE)
Leaseweb Netherlands B.V. Hessenbergweg 95, 1101 CX Amsterdam, Netherlands	GPU hosting for Nodion-operated models in the Netherlands. Processing of Customer API Data only in ephemeral memory on those hosts, under Nodion’s operation. No intended access to request content by the sub-processor.	EU (NL)
Hetzner Online GmbH Industriestraße 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany	GPU hosting for Nodion-operated models in Germany and Finland. Processing of Customer API Data only in ephemeral memory on those hosts, under Nodion’s operation. No intended access to request content by the sub-processor.	EU (DE/FI)
Hetzner Finland Oy Huurrekuja 10, 04360 Tuusula, Finland	Further processor of Hetzner Online GmbH for Finnish GPU sites (building and technical support). No intended access to request content beyond that facility role.	EU (FI)
UpCloud Oy Aleksanterinkatu 15 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland	GPU hosting for Nodion-operated models in Finland. Processing of Customer API Data only in ephemeral memory on those hosts, under Nodion’s operation. No intended access to request content by the sub-processor.	EU (FI)
Verda Cloud Oy Töölönlahdenkatu 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland	GPU hosting for Nodion-operated models. Processing of Customer API Data only in ephemeral memory on those hosts, under Nodion’s operation. No intended access to request content by the sub-processor.	EU (FI)

Third-country transfer: none. Transfer mechanism: not applicable: data stays in the EU/EEA.

Contact

Nodion GmbH, Königstraße 27, 70173 Stuttgart, Germany
privacy@nodion.com