‘By supporting the emergence of Bull, we are choosing strategic independence,’ said France’s minister delegate for artificial intelligence and digital affairs.

France has completed its acquisition of 100pc of the capital of supercomputer maker Bull from Atos Group, in a deal that marks a “major step forward for French and European technological sovereignty”.

The acquisition, the completion of which was announced yesterday (31 March), is expected to boost France and Europe’s tech sovereignty, particularly in the areas of high‑performance computing, AI and quantum technologies, according to the French state and Bull. The French state is now the sole shareholder of Bull.

“The revival of Bull as an independent company supported by the French state marks a decisive step in our history,” said Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull. “With a long‑term strategic shareholder, we are strengthening our position as a trusted industrial partner across the entire value chain of high‑performance computing, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.”

The deal to acquire Bull from Atos Group was first agreed in July of last year, when France agreed to pay an enterprise value of up to €404m for the company.

Bull, which is headquartered in Bezons, France, designs and manufactures supercomputers and high‑performance servers, as well as enterprise servers, software solutions, AI use cases and innovations in quantum computing.

“The supercomputers produced there meet the most demanding needs of national defence, industry and fundamental research, and are also essential for training and deploying artificial intelligence models,” read yesterday’s announcement. “They are recognised for their performance and energy efficiency – two decisive criteria for training large AI models.”

The computing company has been in operation for nearly a century, having been founded in 1931. The company was acquired by Atos Group in 2014, when it became that organisation’s advanced computing business.

Europe’s sovereignty push

The completion of France’s purchase of Bull comes amid a wider push for tech sovereignty in Europe in recent times – particularly in the wake of recent transatlantic tensions with the current US administration.

France and Germany have been prominent figureheads in the push for European digital sovereignty, with both countries taking centre stage at last November’s Summit on European Digital Sovereignty to propose a number of initiatives – including the launch of a joint taskforce on European digital sovereignty led by the two nations.

Sovereignty efforts have seen milestones achieved in Europe’s supercomputing space in particular.

Last September, Jupiter, the first computer system in Europe to achieve exascale threshold – one that performs more than one quintillion operations per second – was inaugurated at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany.

Jupiter joined existing supercomputers in the EuroHPC network – namely, MareNostrum in Spain, Leonardo in Italy, Lumi in Finland, Discoverer in Bulgaria, MeluXina in Luxembourg, Vega in Slovenia, Karolina in Czechia and Deucalion in Portugal – together conducting billions of calculations per second.

Two months later, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) signed a procurement contract with Eviden for the delivery of Alice Recoque, a new European exascale supercomputer (named after the late pioneering French computer scientist) to be located in France.

“The state’s entry into Bull’s share capital marks a decisive step for our digital sovereignty,” said Anne Le Hénanff, France’s minister delegate for artificial intelligence and digital affairs. “At a time when artificial intelligence and quantum technologies are profoundly reshaping technological balances, France is equipping itself with a leading industrial player in high‑performance computing.

“By supporting the emergence of Bull, we are choosing strategic independence. It is a strong signal: that of a country that invests, that protects its expertise, and that is determined to remain sovereign in the technologies that will shape the world of tomorrow.”

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