The French government has made an offer to buy out part of the former Advanced Computing business from Atos for €410 million, sending a clear signal: the state does not intend to surrender key technological competences to the market or to competitors. It is a move that could not only stabilise Atos’ difficult situation, but also redefine the role of the public sector in the European IT industry.
Atos – from power to problems
Just a few years ago, Atos was a symbol of ambition for the European technology sector. As a global IT integrator and a leader in areas such as supercomputing and cloud services, it was reaching a capitalisation of more than €10 billion. However, misguided acquisitions, corporate conflicts and growing debt pushed the company to the margins of the market. In 2024, Atos reached a restructuring deal with its creditors, saving itself from bankruptcy.
In this context, the French offer to buy out the strategic part of Atos – responsible for high-performance computing (HPC) technologies used in defence and research, among other applications – is not only a rescue operation. It is also a political signal: Paris sees advanced IT infrastructure as part of its technological sovereignty.
Excluded from the deal is the Vision AI business, which is to be transferred to Eviden, one of Atos’ new organisational structures. This is a conscious separation of the forward-looking, commercial component from the infrastructural, strategic core of the business, which is being taken over by the state.
To the rescue
This step is part of a wider trend of European ‘technonationalism’. More and more countries – from Germany to Italy – are intervening in the IT and semiconductor sectors, considering them as elements of national security. For France, which is also investing in sovereign clouds (such as the Bleu project with Capgemini and Orange), the acquisition of Atos’ computing technologies is a way of consolidating strategic competence beyond Big Tech.
The question remains: does the French government intend to rebuild the value of Atos as a market player, or will it turn its remnants into a public technology agency? The answer to this question will define the future of one of the old continent’s most important IT companies – and potentially the role of the state in Europe’s digital economy.
