Exploring Sovereign Datacentre’s with Scaleway
As the race to digital sovereignty accelerates, Scaleway is emerging as one of Europe’s boldest bets in cloud infrastructure and AI. In a recent conversation with Jean-Baptiste Kempf, Chief Technology Officer at Scaleway, a clear narrative unfolded—one that blends technological ambition, geopolitical pragmatism, and a very real urgency to ensure Europe has a credible alternative to American and Chinese hyperscalers.
Europe’s Strategic Imperative: Cloud Sovereignty
At the heart of Scaleway’s mission is a simple but critical premise: Europe needs its own scalable, sovereign cloud infrastructure. Kempf underscored this imperative, noting that in a world where digital assets are the new strategic reserves, control over data location and processing is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity.
Scaleway is leaning into this challenge. Their data centers are fully owned and operated in-house, using a mix of open-source and proprietary technologies. This ensures full jurisdictional control over infrastructure and data—a clear differentiator in today’s fragmented global cloud market. And with ambitions to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with players like AWS and Google Cloud, Scaleway isn’t just talking sovereignty—they’re building for it.
Building Europe’s AI Backbone
Beyond cloud infrastructure, Scaleway is making bold moves in artificial intelligence. With a fleet of around 5,000 NVIDIA GPUs already deployed, the company is positioning itself as one of the largest AI infrastructure providers in Europe, excluding the U.S.-based giants.
This kind of scale doesn’t come cheap—or easy. The energy demands alone are reshaping data center strategies, prompting discussions about colocation with power plants to ensure grid stability and efficiency. Scaleway is deploying its AI workloads primarily in France and Sweden, leveraging low-carbon energy sources to align with Europe’s broader climate goals. It’s not just about scale—it’s about responsible scale.
From Training to the Edge: A European AI Vision
Kempf also shared a glimpse of the road ahead. The AI landscape is shifting rapidly—from large foundation model training in centralized data centers to real-time inference and decision-making at the edge. Whether it’s in robotics, smart devices, or next-generation digital services, edge AI is becoming the new frontier.
This is where Scaleway sees another inflection point. As more AI workloads migrate to edge environments, the need for decentralized, high-performance, and low-latency infrastructure becomes critical. And again, sovereignty plays a role—keeping data local, secure, and under regional governance.
The Robotics Horizon—and Beyond
The conversation naturally veered toward the emerging wave of AI-enabled robotics. What was once sci-fi is fast becoming operational reality—from telerobotics in healthcare to autonomous systems in industrial settings. Kempf’s outlook was clear: the next chapter of AI won’t be limited to software. It will manifest physically—in devices, machines, and systems that learn, adapt, and act in real time.
Final Reflections
Scaleway’s trajectory offers more than a technical case study—it reflects a broader European ambition to reclaim digital agency. By investing in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure, the company is not just building services—it’s helping shape the foundation of Europe’s digital future.
The key message? Europe doesn’t need to play catch-up. With the right partners, the right principles, and the right compute footprint, it can lead. And as conversations around AI, cloud, and autonomy evolve, Scaleway is already positioning itself where those future-state strategies begin to take shape.
This interview with Jean-Baptiste, Chief Technology Officer at Scaleway , was recorded at NVIDIA GTC 2025 by Kevin O’Donovan, a member of IIoT World’s Board of Advisors.
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