TL;DRAlibaba Cloud launched its first data centres in France, opening two availability zones in Paris as its third European hub. The expansion comes as the EU’s new Cloud and AI Development Act introduces sovereignty rules that could limit non-EU providers’ access to public-sector contracts.
Alibaba Cloud on Wednesday launched its first data centres in France, opening two availability zones in Paris as part of a broader push into a European market that is rapidly reassessing its dependency on foreign cloud providers. The facilities make France Alibaba Cloud’s third European hub, after Germany, where it has operated since 2016, and Britain.
“The expansion of our cloud infrastructure into France reinforces our ongoing commitment to empowering European businesses with sovereign, secure, and intelligent solutions,” said Feifei Li, Alibaba Cloud’s chief technology officer and president of international business. The company said it plans to roll out agentic AI services across Europe in the second half of the year.
Sovereignty as sales pitch
The timing is deliberate. The European Commission published its tech sovereignty package on 3 June, a bundle of measures aimed at reducing the bloc’s dependence on American and Asian technology across semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence.
