Enabling Europe’s Sovereign AI Ecosystem: From HPC Systems to Hybrid AI and Quantum Co

Crispin Keable, senior solution architect at Bull, presents the company's strategy for delivering sovereign European computing across HPC, AI, and quantum. Now a standalone entity after its period under Atos, with the French sovereign wealth fund as sole shareholder, Bull operates in over thirty countries and positions itself as a full-stack provider spanning silicon design, systems, software, and services. Keable highlights the expansion of the Angers factory in France, expected to build four exascale systems simultaneously by 2027, and a recently signed agreement with Foxconn to manufacture undifferentiated AI systems such as NVL72-class machines in Europe, starting with a production line in the Czech Republic, while differentiated systems remain in Bull's own factory. The portfolio includes the Bull Sequana XH3500 direct-liquid-cooled flagship, supporting up to 264 kilowatts per rack and the fastest current GPUs; the BXI (Bull Exascale Interconnect) Ethernet-based high-performance network going live at the end of the year; the Smart Management Center software stack; and Jarvis for cloud-like system presentation. He notes Bull-designed systems held the top three Green500 positions that week and cites JUPITER's energy efficiency. In quantum, Bull provides the Qaptiva software environment for simulation and hybrid QPU-accelerated applications in partnership with hardware vendors rather than building QPUs itself. Around 300 data scientists develop ready-to-go AI use cases aligned with government priorities such as health and transport, reflecting the view that governments are the primary customers for large sovereign AI investments.