After Scaleway, Hosteur also leaves Gaia-X

Two weeks after the thunderous departure of Scaleway, a new French operator—the cloud hosting company Hosteur—slams the door on Gaia-X, the European sovereign cloud project.

In a press release, the company invokes the same reason that pushed Scaleway to leave Gaia-X: a betrayal of the project’s principles. « Initially presented as a sovereign European alternative, Gaia-X was to become a competitor for the dominant players in the sector. Nevertheless, during its development the multicloud welcomed several American and Chinese companies, » Hosteur explains.

Alibaba, Amazon, Google or Microsoft have indeed joined Gaia-X (even if they cannot vote in the board of directors) and have even been sponsors of the European consortium’s annual event in November 2021.

Hosteur points to a split between two opposing visions of Gaia-X among European players: « The opening up to non-European companies, which is widely supported by the German and Dutch governments—who are openly pro-American—has always posed a problem for the real supporters of the project, be they French, Italians or Spanish. »

« For Hosteur, this is not a strategic decision but rather a moral one. Continuing this collaboration knowing that the project is sabotaged from the inside by Gafa is not only a waste of time but also a betrayal of our customers because none of the essential objectives of the project—sovereignty, data confidentiality, and reversibility—will be respected, » concludes Laurent Escart, CEO of the Hosteur group.