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“”Stop using chatgpt, try Mistral. Necessarily stop looking for American models. Use open source models on French cloud“, Claims, Tuesday, June 10 on Franceinfo, Aude Durand, the delegated director general of Iliad, on the eve of the opening of the Vivatech show. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, is also expected on Wednesday at the Salon which is held in Porte de Versailles in Paris and in which Iliad, the parent company of Free, the group created by Xavier Niel will be present.
Iliad achieved 10 billion euros in turnover in 2024. He therefore owns Free with more than 23.5 million mobile subscribers in France. But he is also present in the field of the cloud with Scaleway, in the data centers with OPCORE, in research in generative artificial intelligence with the KYUTAI laboratory. Yet L‘Guest of honor at the show will be the boss of the world’s largest market capitalization, Jensen Huang, the boss of the American Nvidia, undisputed leader in electronic chips.
Franceinfo: Does that bother you that the President of the Republic unrolls the red carpet to the boss of Nvidia who is an American company?
Aude DURAND : No, I can’t find it neither embarrassing nor contradictory to the idea of focusing this Vivatech on technological sovereignty. In fact, when we think about pushing the French artificial intelligence ecosystem on the front of the stage, you still have to be pragmatic. We must give access to the best technologies, to our talents and we must push them towards innovation with the best resources. Today, we recognize a major technological advantage in Nvidia and it is in our interest that Nvidia supports the French ecosystem. He is also a very big partner of Scaleway.
Do you use Nvidia chips?
Of course, yes. Besides, Scaleway offers today, as an actor in the European cloud, the greatest computing power dedicated to AI with the largest number of Nvidia chips available in Europe.
“This does not prevent us from working with other manufacturers who can have additional or alternative solutions. But we must recognize that today even our researchers acclaim NVIDIA.”
Aude DURANDon franceinfo
Today there is no alternative, they are the best?
Indeed, at this level, they must be recognized as a technological advance that they have developed over the last 20 years and that does not prevent the ecosystem from continuing to work on alternatives. This kind of advance can always change.
Data Center, Cloud … You master the entire AI value chain. Does that mean that you don’t use American software at all like Microsoft or Google?
Indeed, in our activities, even telecoms, we try as much as possible to have an internalization of all our technological know-how, to have strategic independence. This also allows us to guarantee our data, to guarantee our status as an operator of vital importance. And by doing this, we have developed over the years, for 25 years of existence of Iliad, know -how on the construction of data centers, on the construction of a cloud platform.
“Today, we already have fifteen data centers in Europe and we will obviously continue to invest in massively several billion euros.”
Aude DURANDon franceinfo
2.5 billion investment you have planned over the next 50 years?
Yes, absolutely, as the first envelope to start developing data centers with electrical powers much more substantial than what has been done in the past. Because today artificial intelligence requires this level of investment on the cloud part.
“We have also developed a complete software suite, a cloud platform for businesses, which is therefore developed on open source bricks or therefore by developers in Europe.”
Aude DURANDon franceinfo
There is absolutely no American software.
Your customers, what do they risk if they use American software, knowing that we know that there is an extraterritoriality rule that exists for the United States?
The risk that is best known is the risk of damaging data that ultimately, especially the United States, can go and watch the most strategic data of our businesses, since it is stored on American business software. So, even if they are stored in France, if the software suite is American, this data can be subject to this subject of extraterritoriality.
And that is why you need to use open source software rather?
Open Source software allows you to accommodate in France, in Europe, your solutions, your data, with a software suite which is not subject to this regulation. So this is the case of what the Scaleway platform offers. It still allows other things, it also allows to have economic resilience, since suddenly you are not subject to a pricing policy which can change overnight, not necessarily because of the companies, but also of a political context which can evolve, we have seen it recently. So that has multiple interests for companies today to start having multicloud strategies, so distributing their risks and being able to seek new players and obviously rather European sovereign.
European sovereigns, are there others other than you?
Today on public cloud platforms which are really equivalent to functionalities in Amazon, Google or Microsoft, we are the most advanced on the suite of public cloud products. And as I said earlier, we are number one on the artificial intelligence part. So we have more and more partnerships today with large private companies, but also public partnerships to support research, to provide sovereign solutions to all these actors who innovate in AI.
So awareness exists, we are talking more and more of digital sovereignty, you have private and public customers who turn to you?
There is a changeover that has taken place clearly in recent months. Afterwards, it is not necessarily simple for the largest companies that have had a slightly monobloc strategy on the cloud for several years to rock. So we accompany them to gradually come and pass their most strategic data flow on platforms like ours. I think it is a conversation that is more and more at the level of the boards of directors today and which must be promoted.
We talked a lot about building a kind of European airbus in digital. Do you think that today you have to create a European leader in the field of cloud in particular, or artificial intelligence more widely?
There must be several leaders. In any case, the ecosystem of artificial intelligence …
What is missing to create it today?
What is missing? In fact, surprisingly, I think there is a lack of believing in it and a little optimism. It is true that we have all had the reflex for 20 years to say good about a technological solution, in fact, I will go get an American solution. It is sure that she is better. We all did it.
“We all use more Google than Qwant, we all use the Office Suites more than others …”
Aude DURANDon franceinfo
But it lacks optimism.
It lacks optimism. And today, on AI in Europe, we are not late. This is what I try to pass as a message. Stop using chatgpt, try Mistral. Necessarily stop looking for American models. Use open source models on French cloud.
