OVHcloud plans frontier AI models to become Europe's second LLM player

OVHcloud just made its first acquisition ever, and it’s a big one for Europe’s AI ambitions. The French cloud giant purchased Dragon LLM, a Paris-based startup that builds generative AI models specifically designed for regulated industries like finance.

The deal, announced on March 25, marks OVHcloud’s formal entry into the business of actually building AI models, not just hosting them. Alongside the acquisition, the company is launching a dedicated AI lab focused on training and fine-tuning sovereign large language models for both cloud and on-premises deployment.

From landlord to builder

OVHcloud launched AI Endpoints in April 2025, a serverless inference platform that provides access to more than 40 open-source models, including variants from Llama and Mistral. The Dragon LLM acquisition changes that equation. Instead of merely renting out compute to run someone else’s AI, OVHcloud is now building proprietary models in-house.

Dragon LLM won the European Commission’s Large AI Grand Challenge. Its specialty in building models for the finance sector, where data sensitivity and regulatory compliance aren’t optional, makes it a natural fit for OVHcloud’s sovereignty-first positioning.