OVH Groupe SAS

Europe's largest established technology companies are emerging as unexpected beneficiaries of the AI boom, according to recent earnings. SAP, Capgemini, Sopra Steria, and OVHcloud have all reported stronger demand, faster growth, or upgraded outlooks as large organizations move from experimenting with artificial intelligence to deploying it across their operations. SAP's cloud backlog rose 26% at constant currencies to €22.9 billion, while Capgemini raised its annual growth target after bookings climbed 9.2% and Sopra Steria upgraded its outlook following organic growth acceleration to 5.3%. OVHcloud's public-cloud revenue rose 20.2% in its third quarter, providing early evidence that demand for European-controlled AI infrastructure is translating into commercial growth. The trend reflects the growing complexity of making AI work with existing software, data, and business processes, as well as rising demand for greater control over AI deployment in sectors such as defense, aerospace, and critical infrastructure.

The Italy data center market is projected to grow from an estimated $3.91 billion in 2025 to $7.09 billion by 2031, at a compound annual growth rate of 10.42%. Key drivers include rising demand for AI, big data, and IoT, with Retelit planning a $116 million investment in two AI-ready centers in Milan Bisceglie by 2026. Italy passed a comprehensive national AI law in 2025, the first in the EU, while submarine cable expansion, such as Unitirreno's 718-mile subsea system, strengthens the country's role as a digital hub. Major cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Oracle are expanding, and OVHcloud launched its first Milan data center in May 2025. Sustainability efforts include Enfinity Global's 33.8 MW solar plant in partnership with Microsoft.

OVHcloud reported third-quarter fiscal year 2026 revenue of €289.6 million, with organic growth accelerating to 6.9% like-for-like, driven by Public Cloud which returned to growth above 20%. Private Cloud revenue reached €174.0 million, up 4.0% like-for-like, while Web Cloud grew 2.0% to €50.0 million. The company confirmed its full-year guidance, including organic revenue growth between 5% and 7%, an adjusted EBITDA margin above the prior year, and positive levered free cash flow. OVHcloud also announced the acquisition of voice AI expert Gladia and previewed its OVHai Workspace agentic AI platform.

AI investors face a new political risk after the US administration restricted foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic's most advanced models, pushing government intervention from chips into the model layer itself. Anthropic disabled access to the two models for everyone, turning model availability into an operational risk for providers, enterprise users, and investors. Anthropic's thin pre-IPO proxy contract on Hyperliquid slipped about 3.7% to around $1,627, while its future IPO valuation is reportedly near $965 billion. In response, China's Zhipu unveiled its most advanced open-source model within hours, sending its shares up 33% on Monday, and DeepSeek made a permanent 75% price cut on its latest model. Europe's AI-sovereignty trade also gained momentum, with OVH Groupe climbing to its highest level since 2023 and Mistral AI in funding talks that could nearly double its valuation to 20 billion.

OVHcloud plans to train frontier AI models, positioning itself as a potential European challenger to Mistral. CEO Octave Klaba told Reuters at the VivaTech conference that mastering this technology is essential for the company's future, citing advances in chips, training techniques, and synthetic data that have reduced the cost of such projects from about 1 billion euros to between 150 million and 200 million euros. The company will launch a family of models rather than a single system, with pre-training already completed on a model using Europe's fastest supercomputer, Jupiter, through the recently acquired startup DragonLLM. OVHcloud intends to open-source its models once they reach sufficient performance and will not use client data for training.