Airbus has chosen French cloud company Scaleway to handle some of its most sensitive engineering data, a decision that caps off a tender process the aerospace giant kicked off earlier this year specifically to find a European alternative to the American cloud providers it already relies on.
The selection covers workloads tied to aircraft design, engineering, manufacturing, and enterprise operations, work Airbus described as involving data too sensitive to leave under the reach of foreign laws. Rather than replacing its existing cloud setup entirely, Airbus is folding Scaleway into a broader multicloud strategy, meaning it plans to route specific workloads to whichever provider fits best based on technical requirements and, increasingly, where regulators require the data to physically sit.
Airbus said it evaluated tender applicants on a mix of factors: cloud service capabilities, how well systems interoperate, scalability, AI readiness, and separately, legal and governance safeguards tied to keeping data inside European jurisdiction. That last category has grown more important across European industry broadly, as companies grow increasingly wary of US laws like the CLOUD Act, which can force American cloud providers to hand over data no matter where in the world it physically sits.
Catherine Jestin, Airbus’s EVP of digital, said the move centers on building a cloud environment that keeps critical data assets out of reach of foreign extraterritorial laws while making sure the company’s digital infrastructure keeps up with its aerospace ambitions. She framed the decision as one piece of a broader, longer-term commitment to European digital sovereignty, not simply a switch from one vendor to another.
Scaleway CEO Damien Lucas said the partnership means more than a single contract win. In his view, it shows that European providers can go toe-to-toe technically with their larger American counterparts, and that the continent can deliver sovereign cloud capabilities that hold up against the highest international standards.
The deal follows a separate move by Airbus in May, when the company added a second high-performance computing system from Bull as part of a multiyear supercomputing contract, another piece of what looks like a broader effort to build out infrastructure the company controls more directly, rather than leaning entirely on cloud providers based outside Europe.
