Ardian, Artefact, Bull, EDF, Capgemini, the iliad Group, Orange and Scaleway have formed the AION consortium to submit a French bid under the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Gigafactories initiative. The group positions the project as an industrial, financial and strategic response to Europe’s growing need for massive computing power that is available, affordable and sovereign. Its goal is to enable European companies to train, deploy and operate their Artificial Intelligence models under controlled conditions for performance, cost and sovereignty.
AION says it brings together capabilities across the full value chain needed to build next-generation European infrastructure. The consortium highlights expertise spanning supercomputers, microprocessors, quantum computing solutions, critical infrastructure, energy, cloud platforms, sovereign Artificial Intelligence, datacenter development and operations, deployment capabilities, investment capacity and industrial know-how. It also points to a wider ecosystem of technology, academic and industrial partners and user companies including Le Crédit Agricole, Equans, Future4Care, GENCI, Hugging Face, INRIA, Kyutai, LightOn, Multiverse Computing, Nokia, Opcore, Quandela, PariSanté Campus, Schneider Electric, SiPearl, Sopra Steria, Verne, VSORA and ZML.
The consortium presents France as a strong host location because of its abundant, affordable, sovereign and low-carbon electricity, backed mainly by nuclear and hydraulic power, along with robust digital infrastructure and expertise in data centers, cloud services and high-performance computing. It also points to France’s research base, scientific and industrial talent, and established technology ecosystem. According to the group, hosting an Artificial Intelligence Gigafactory in France would help strengthen European tech sovereignty, accelerate adoption by private and public-sector organizations, and support competitiveness and innovation across the region.
AION says the bid rests on four pillars: performance, trust, openness and responsibility. Performance focuses on deploying world-class Artificial Intelligence infrastructure for the European economy. Trust centers on strategic autonomy and control across the Artificial Intelligence value chain, from hardware to open source software, supported by sovereign players. Openness emphasizes open source technologies and partnerships across the European ecosystem. Responsibility focuses on serving research, businesses and citizens while limiting environmental impact.
The alliance describes the announcement as the starting point for a broader industrial project intended to bring in additional French and European participants. Executives from the member companies frame the initiative as a way to reduce dependence on infrastructure designed, financed and operated outside Europe, while building sovereign and sustainable computing capacity at scale. Orange, Scaleway and Capgemini in particular emphasize trusted cloud, sovereign digital services, interoperability and enterprise deployment, while EDF highlights France’s low-carbon electricity as a competitive foundation for the proposed facility.
