Qarnot computing
Qarnot est une entreprise française spécialisée dans le calcul informatique haute-performance.
ID: 613915845843-71
Lobbying Activity
Response to Cloud and AI Development Act
2 Jul 2025
EU Cloud and AI Development Act bring questions and challenges for Europe. It is mandatory for the future of Europe competitiveness to find a new ways. New approaches for software, hardware and infrastructure will be the opportunity to regain leadership, otherwise the EU will still be lagging behind. 1) Energy & sustainability: no unlimited energy. Developing AI infrastructures while promoting "highly sustainable" sounds antithetic if done in the classical way. Sam ALTMAN, CEO of OpenAI considers that a significant fraction of the power on Earth should be spent running AI! It is not possible from a power supply perspective, nor an environmental perspective (water consumption, or extractive industries). Changing the DC paradigm is essential, the heat provided by the DCs might allow energy consumption reallocation. Energy consumption has to be mutualised, heat produced by DCs must be reused to allow energy reallocation. Imposing sustainability is essential, to ensure that AI and cloud growth wont just jeopardize Europe climate plans or energy availability. Qarnots demonstrates that computing infrastructure growth is compatible with sustainability, lower CAPEX and quicker deployments. 2) Energy and sustainability: need for public support for green infrastructure. Seamless development and deployment will require lowering regulatory barriers. Reducing regulatory mismatch between IT and energy, will help supporting development of sustainable DCs as an energy prosumer, and not only an element of grid destabilisation. GBER for instance has to consider this opportunity. IT waste heat is a green and sustainable energy and shall be supported by public funding as any other renewable energy. 3) Sovereignty: market barriers in favor of EU stakeholders. Sovereignty is a path to regain market advantage and competitiveness. Letting EU energy and procurement for the benefit of US businesses cannot be profitable for European stakeholders. Sovereignty definition at EU level is important, to build market barriers upon it. EUCS security certification shall consider sovereignty. Its time for Europe to rethink its strategy by considering EU preference and set a Buy European Act, EU has to adapt to new market rules and realities. 4) Sovereignty: all components matter, open source is key. AI value chain components shall be europeanised or at least open sourced. A broader open source strategy for Europe is of interest. As for hardware sovereignty, relying only on foreign hardware is limited and risky. Specialised hardware could be interesting and supported for this matter. 5) Competitiveness: building EU champions, need to revolutionise EU funding and support. Public procurement and large business orders will be necessary. Building EU champions shall be a strategy at EU level, this will have to be done through highly demanding public spending efficiency. EU funding shall continue evolving, moving even more from grants to loans, leasing, equity or other innovative financial tools to support EU businesses. The AI continent initiative aims to develop the AI ecosystem in the EU, but there is a risk that AI factories will compete with European clouds trying to develop an AI offering. In the US ecosystem, most GPUs are owned by hyperscalers and there is generally a strong public procurement policy (NASA spends 100B$+ a year on US cloud). In EU, most of our GPUs are hosted in public infrastructures, which has two negative effects, i) public procurement dont benefit EU cloud providers, ii) cloud-consuming companies will have access to AI factories (as today with some supercomputers) and AI factories will end up actively competing with EU cloud providers, preventing them from developing and competing with hyperscalers. To avoid this situation and ensure that both research and industry benefit from the AI Continent Act, AI factories shall be funded by public authorities, owned and operated by private entities, while ensuring public procurement.
Read full responseMeeting with Olivier Guersent (Director-General Competition)
11 May 2022 · Discussion on DMA