Scaleway, GENCI and the CNRS join forces to accelerate AI development in Europe

Today at VivaTech,  in the presence of Philippe Baptiste – the French Minister in charge of Higher Education and Research – GENCI, the CNRS and Scaleway announced an unprecedented strategic partnership in the area of artificial intelligence. The aim of this alliance is to unite their respective capabilities and expertise to build a sovereign public/private continuum unique in Europe.

Building public-private bridges to accelerate the development and use of AI

The French public research sector has not only some of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, but also strong expertise in accompanying communities and optimizing applications. In parallel, the European cloud industry is advancing rapidly, driven by players such as Scaleway. However bridges between these two worlds are still few and far between, and the partnership between GENCI, the CNRS and Scaleway is aimed at building them.
This new partnership is underpinned by three key focuses:

• Interoperability: create an environment that is technically compatible between public infrastructure – like GENCI’s Jean Zay supercomputer at IDRIS (the CNRS’s high-performance computing center) – and Scaleway’s private AI clusters, so that researchers and businesses can seamlessly switch their AI-related work and usages (learning, fine-tuning, large-scale inference) between public and private infrastructure.
• Overflow: use Scaleway’s private GPU capacities when public resources are saturated, within a framework of trust and shared governance.
• Research: set up a collaborative lab, dedicated to optimizing AI loads and reducing the carbon footprint of intensive calculation.

A technical and political alliance

Damien Lucas, CEO of Scaleway, said: “Some of our customers were helped by GENCI with their R&D work when they started out, before finding in Scaleway a partner capable of meeting their commercial needs on an appropriate scale. Through this partnership, we’re making this switch easier by enabling fast migration for a larger number of business, industrial and research projects.”

This collaboration fits seamlessly with the objectives of the AI Factory France project, led by GENCI, and the goal set by France and the European Commission of shaping a decentralized, interoperable and sovereign AI ecosystem capable of competing at a global level.

Philippe Lavocat, Chairman and CEO of GENCI, said: “The construction of the public-private continuum that lies at the heart of this new alliance with Scaleway and the CNRS is a vital step towards reinforcing the excellence of French digital research infrastructure. In the near future, this new tool for meeting the needs of public and private researchers, academics and industry players will contribute to the European AI powerhouse currently being created (through the European Commission’s AI Continent Action Plan), with France being selected to host one of the AI Factories launched by EuroHPC. GENCI is extremely proud to be taking part in this unprecedented initiative designed to advance research in France and further boost the country’s attractiveness for businesses.”

Mehdi Gmar, Deputy CEO for Innovation at the CNRS, said:_ “Artificial intelligence is radically transforming the production and use of knowledge. To meet the challenges of technology and sovereignty that AI raises, dialog between public research and industrial players is essential. The Jean Zay supercomputer is a prime example of this approach as it enables researchers and businesses to work and learn together. The partnership announced today between GENCI, the CNRS and Scaleway clearly illustrates our shared goal of building a sovereign public-private continuum to drive high-performance AI.”_ 

About GENCI
Created by France’s public authorities in 2007, GENCI (Grand Équipement National de Calcul Intensif) is a major research infrastructure. This public operator aims to democratize the use of digital simulation through high-performance computing associated with the use of artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, to support French scientific and industrial competitiveness.

GENCI has three missions: 

• Implementing France’s national strategy for the provision of resources for high-performance computing, storage and massive data processing associated with AI technologies and future quantum computing technologies, for the benefit of French and European open scientific research, in conjunction with France’s three national computing centers.
• Supporting the creation of an integrated ecosystem on a national and European scale. 
• Promoting digital simulation and supercomputing to open academic research and industry.
  GENCI is a non-trading company (société civile) that is 49% owned by the French State (represented by the Ministry in charge of Higher Education and Research), 20% by the CEA, 20% by the CNRS, 10% by the Universities (represented by France Universités) and 1% by Inria. 
  Website: https://www.genci.fr
  Press contact: Nicolas Belot I nicolas.belot@genci.fr

About the CNRS
A major player in basic research worldwide, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) is the only French organization active in all scientific fields. Its unique position as a multi-specialist enables it to bring together all of the scientific disciplines in order to shed light on and understand the challenges of today's world, in connection with public and socio-economic stakeholders. Together, the different sciences contribute to sustainable progress that benefits society as a whole.
Website: www.cnrs.fr
Press contact: Manon Landurant I manon.landurant@cnrs.fr

About Scaleway
Scaleway is the European leader in public cloud and a true alternative to the US hyperscalers. A subsidiary of the iliad Group, Scaleway combines decades of infrastructure expertise with the agility of a state-of-the-art tech company. With a rapidly expanding network of data centers, Scaleway offers a comprehensive portfolio of high-performance cloud services, from virtual machines to advanced data management solutions, cloud-native infrastructure and AI-optimized supercomputers. Championing open standards and operating within a fully European framework, Scaleway provides a secure and transparent cloud environment that meets the needs of organizations with the highest digital sovereignty requirements.

Website: www.scaleway.com
Press contact: presse@scaleway.com