‘By supporting the evolution of the Bull, we choose strategic independence,’ said the French minister delegate of artificial intelligence and digital affairs.
France has completed its purchase of 100pc of the capital of major computer manufacturer Bull from Atos Group, in a deal that marks “a major step forward for the French and European technology empire”.
The acquisition, the completion of which was announced yesterday (March 31), is expected to increase the technological dominance of France and Europe, especially in the areas of high-performance computing, AI and quantum technology, according to the French state and Bull. The French state is now the sole shareholder of the Bull.
“The revival of Bull as a private company backed by the French state marks a decisive step in our history,” said Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull. “With a long-term shareholder, we are strengthening our position as a trusted industrial partner across the value chain of high-performance computing, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.”
The deal to acquire Bull from Atos Group was first agreed in July last year, with France agreeing to pay an enterprise value of €404m for the company.
Bull, headquartered in Bezons, France, designs and manufactures supercomputers and high-performance servers, as well as business servers, software solutions, AI use cases and quantum computing innovations.
“The supercomputers produced there meet the most demanding requirements of national defense, industry and basic research, and are essential for training and deploying artificial intelligence models,” reads yesterday’s announcement. “They are known for their efficiency and power efficiency – two important methods for training large AI models.”
The computer company has been around for almost a century, founded in 1931. The company was acquired by the Atos Group in 2014, when it became the company’s advanced computing business.
European imperialism is oppressive
The completion of the French purchase of Bull comes amid the pursuit of technological supremacy in Europe in recent times – mainly due to the recent transatlantic conflicts with the current administration of the US.
France, along with Germany, have been prominent leaders in the push for European digital sovereignty, both countries taking the lead at last November’s Conference on the Digital Sovereignty of Europe to propose several initiatives – including the launch of a joint task force on European digital sovereignty led by both nations.
Imperial efforts have seen milestones reached in the European supercomputing space in particular.
Last September, Jupiter, Europe’s first supercomputing system – performing more than a million operations per second – was inaugurated at the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany.
Jupiter joined the existing supercomputers in the EuroHPC network – that is, 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 they performed billions of calculations per second.
A month later, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) signed a procurement contract with Eviden to deliver Alice Recoque, a European exascale supercomputer (named after the late pioneering French computer scientist) to be located in France.
“The government’s entry into the capital of the Bull share marks a decisive step for our digital sovereignty,” said Anne Le Hénanff, the French minister for artificial intelligence and digital affairs. “At a time when artificial intelligence and quantum technology are profoundly changing the technological balance, France is equipping itself with the leading industrial player in high-performance computing.
“By supporting the evolution of Bull, we choose the independence that matters. It is a strong symbol: of a country that invests, protects its technology, and is determined to remain independent of the technology that will shape the world of tomorrow.”
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