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

By Leo Marchandon

PARIS, June ‌17 (Reuters) - OVHcloud plans ​to ​train frontier AI models - the most advanced, large-scale systems built from scratch using vast data and computing power - its CEO ‌said on Wednesday, positioning the firm as a potential European ⁠challenger to Mistral.

The move marks a shift for OVHcloud, Europe's largest cloud provider, as governments ‌and companies seek alternatives to ‌U.S. and Chinese AI systems - a search made more pressing by the recent abrupt switch-off of Anthropic's top-tier models.

"It became quite clear ​to us that if we don't master this technology, we can't guarantee our future," OVHcloud CEO Octave Klaba told Reuters at the VivaTech ⁠conference.

Klaba said the economics of developing such cutting-edge models have shifted, citing advances in chips, training ​techniques and synthetic data. A project that might once have cost about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) could now be ​attempted for 150 million to 200 million ‌euros, he said.

He described the industry as entering a "second wave," with new entrants building on groundwork laid by firms ⁠such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral. He added OVHcloud would not use client data to train its models.

The company plans to launch a family of models rather ⁠than a single system. "We can clearly see that the major players release multiple models, ​because each model is built for something specific," Klaba said. "There's no one model that does all the magic alone."

He pointed to DragonLLM, a recently acquired startup, adding ‌that pre-training has been completed on a model using Jupiter, Europe's fastest supercomputer, but cautioned that OVHcloud was not ‌yet ready to make detailed performance claims.

OVHcloud intends to open-source its models ⁠once they reach sufficient performance. "We'll ‌see when we're good enough ​to open source them, but that is indeed the goal," he said.

($1 = 0.8627 euros)

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon. Editing by ‌Mark Potter)

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