France’s government on Tuesday completed the purchase of the supercomputing arm of IT firm Atos, which builds machines for nuclear weapons development as well as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
The move marked “a decisive step for France’s technological sovereignty,” economy minister Roland Lescure said in a statement — a concern that has shot to the top of the agenda in Europe amid transatlantic tensions.
Paris is now the only shareholder of the Atos supercomputing spinoff dubbed Bull, which the company said was valued at up to 404 million euros ($467 million).
Bull has around 3,000 employees worldwide and revenues of 720 million euros in 2025 — up 16 percent year-on-year.
The unit last year completed Europe’s first “exascale” supercomputer, Germany-based Jupiter, able to carry out more than one quintillion (a billion billion) operations per second.
While that computer is powered by chips from American giant Nvidia, the company’s US rival AMD will contribute to its next, more powerful project, France-based Alice Recoque, set for completion in 2027.
“We are the only European player capable of building computers and systems suited to AI,” Bull chief Emmanuel Le Roux told AFP.
Being spun off “gives us the agility required to respond to a market undergoing far-reaching transformation,” he added.
The company has doubled the capacity of a factory in Angers in western France and aims to deliver its first hybrid quantum-classical computer within five years, Le Roux said.
Bull is also aiming to achieve an 80 percent ratio of European components in upcoming supercomputers.
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