OVHcloud CEO says public commitment for EU AI gigafactories too small

Octave Klaba, founder and Chairman of French web-hosting and server provider OVH Group, attends a debate during the MEDEF summer forum "La Rencontre des Entrepreneurs de France, La REF" in Paris, France, August 27, 2026. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Sept ⁠23 (Reuters) - OVHcloud CEO Octave Klaba on Tuesday estimated ⁠operators of Europe's proposed AI gigafactories would need ‌annual sales of 300 million euros to 400 million euros just to break even on facilities built around fast-depreciating graphics chips.

Klaba said ​a proposed 200-million-euro public commitment to ⁠buy AI services over ⁠five years was too small to underpin the scale of ⁠private ‌investment required and said focus on national markets prevented OVHcloud from joining existing French ⁠consortia.

The EuroHPC program is seeking industry consortia to ​build and ‌operate up to seven AI gigafactories: large computing facilities ⁠for training, ​fine-tuning and running AI models.

"Any national strategy is doomed to failure: there are simply not enough customers to make ⁠investments of this size profitable. In ​our view, national demand is too weak and we must operate on a European scale," he said.

Klaba said the ⁠public sector would buy 40 million euros of computing services a year, while an operator would spend at least 600 million euros for chips alone. "The numbers ​don't add up," he said.

He estimated ⁠a gigafactory would need 300 million euros to 400 million ​euros in annual revenue to ‌break even, making the public ​order worth only 10%-15% of required turnover.

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

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法国网络托管和服务器提供商 OVH 集团创始人兼董事长 Octave Klaba 出席 2026 年 8 月 27 日在法国巴黎举行的 MEDEF 夏季论坛“La Rencontre des Entrepreneurs de France, La REF”期间的辩论。 REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

9 月 23 日（路透社）——OVHcloud 首席执行官 Octave Klaba 周二估计，欧洲拟建的 AI 超级工厂的运营商需要每年 3 亿欧元至 4 亿欧元的销售额才能收回成本，因为这些工厂是围绕快速贬值的图形芯片建造的。

Klaba 表示，拟议的 2 亿欧元公共资金承诺在五年内用于购买人工智能服务，金额太小，不足以支撑所需的私人投资规模；他还表示，专注于国内市场阻碍了 OVHcloud 加入现有的法国财团。

EuroHPC 计划正在寻找行业联盟来建设和运营多达七个 AI 超级工厂：用于训练、微调和运行 AI 模型的大型计算设施。

“任何国家层面的战略都注定失败：客户数量不足以支撑如此大规模的投资盈利。我们认为，国内需求太弱，我们必须在欧洲范围内开展业务。”他说道。

克拉巴表示，公共部门每年将购买价值4000万欧元的计算服务，而运营商仅芯片一项就至少要花费6亿欧元。“这根本对不上，”他说。

他估计，一座超级工厂每年需要 3 亿欧元到 4 亿欧元的收入才能实现收支平衡，这意味着公共订单的价值仅占所需营业额的 10%-15%。

（Leo Marchandon在格但斯克报道；Devika Syamnath编辑）

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