Iliad

Iliad is a French telecommunications and technology group founded by Xavier Niel, best known for its disruptive Free mobile and broadband brands that drove down consumer prices in France. Its cloud subsidiary Scaleway operates data centres in Paris, Amsterdam, and Warsaw, positioning itself as a European sovereign alternative to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. In April 2026, Scaleway was awarded France's national Health Data Hub hosting contract, making it the custodian of sensitive French patient data previously at risk of US CLOUD Act exposure under Microsoft Azure .

Iliad's European ambitions extend beyond France. Niel has invested in Free Italia (now the fourth-largest Italian mobile operator), made a significant stake acquisition in Tele2 (Sweden), and has publicly positioned Scaleway as the infrastructure backbone for European AI sovereignty. Scaleway offers GPU compute clusters and bare-metal servers designed for AI workloads, competing directly with US hyperscalers for European enterprise customers who require data residency and GDPR compliance without CLOUD Act exposure risk.

Iliad's strategic significance in European tech sovereignty is structural: it is among the few European-owned, EU-headquartered operators with genuine scale across mobile, broadband, and cloud. The Health Data Hub win validates Scaleway's sovereign-cloud credentials, opening a PATH to further sensitive public-sector contracts across Europe where US cloud providers face CLOUD Act credibility problems.