Resolution Criteria
This market resolves to YES if by market close, April 30 2028, there exists at least one European cloud service provider that:
Has at least 15% market share in the European cloud market
Is headquartered in Europe with majority European ownership
Offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services comparable to major providers (AWS, Azure, GCP)
The market resolves to NO if no European cloud provider meets these criteria by market close.
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@MalachiteEagle a laudable initiative, and a necessary step if Europe wants to survive. But I stand by my evaluation that not going to happen by 2028.
Just like Trump can't bring back manufacturing to the US without paying an enormous price for this to become possible things need to become MUCH worse than they are now.
OVH is bigger than I realized, but their growth in the past year was terrible by cloud standards, at less than 10%:
For comparison, the growth rate for AWS is around 20% per year, and Azure and GCP are at 30%.
The tariff situation is giving their stock a huge boost, so the market probably expects that they'll be able to grow faster this year:
But I still think three years is way too short for them to become a major player.
@Bayesian I think it's plausible. I'm not certain about the 2028 deadline though. I would bet yes for 2029. One way I can see this happening for 2028 is if the EU chooses an immediate and very clear focus on rolling cloud companies like OVH, Scaleway, Hetzner etc into a bigger cloud company the same way they did with Airbus. To get to 15% market share from the current state of affairs would require mandating that critical EU companies move their workloads to the new cloud. I think this is possible especially if there is an escalation between the US/EU over something security related.
@Bayesian my yes bet (for now) is mostly a bet that trump is going to do something very stupid in the next 18 months which will make this reaction considerably more likely.
@Bayesian However, I also believe that the events of 2026-2027 are likely to be highly disruptive and will greatly affect the likelihoods of this question. One example could be China invading Taiwan and cutting off the West from certain types of chips. This would have a major impact on any cloud infrastructure projects. I also think it is plausible that at least one EU country will initiate a state-backed AI project before 2028, which is also likely to have implications for potential EU cloud providers (e.g. significant state-driven demand).
@MalachiteEagle I think it would require AGI for this to happen in 2028. It's the only way to move fast enough.
@MalachiteEagle your comparison with Airbus is frankly absurd. The component companies that merged into Airbus were each global (if struggling) players with decades of experience in the aerospace and defence industry.
Meanwhile OVH, scaleway and Hetzner combined have less employees than Rackspace, and seem to fill the same niche of colocation services and web hosting.
@Odoacre I meant Airbus as a general theme of taking existing companies and turning them into a single bigger company. Not in the sense that these individual companies are currently global players. If the EU wants to have credible home-grown cloud providers then it's better to start from something instead of starting from scratch.
@Odoacre OVH, SAP, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Orange would be other examples. Together they currently make up between 5-10% of the EU cloud market. Split of the cloud computing parts from the national telecoms companies, roll it into a single EU-wide company and voila, just need to grow another x2 maybe not even that.
@Odoacre I think for the telecom companies though that wouldn't want to give up those parts of their services without a lot of screaming, hence the need for political will. But I think it is possible, but only if the disruption occurs due to external shocks. And to respond to your tone, as you said in the previous thread: you'd never even heard of ovh. Your blindspots make you think you know the extent of what's possible and what's not, but in reality there's many different things that can happen, even in a relatively short timeframe. The EU cloud market has a diverse set of (somewhat niche) domestic offers your average american won't have on their radar.
@Odoacre actually, saying that, you write 'specialised' with an s, used the term 'bonkers' and mentioned you were roughly in an AU/NZ timezone. So sorry if I incorrectly implied you were the wrong nationality 🤣
@MalachiteEagle yes, telecom is an area of excellence in the EU, and this is more likely than your previous proposal, however the telecom business is very different from the cloud business. The three telecom companies you mentioned are all AWS customers or partners and would actually suffer a lot if you forced them to switch, especially if you force them to switch and build the replacement at the same time.
As for my tone, it's just that the way you're talking about it makes me think you don't know much about the space, and as someone who works in the space I find your dismissal of the challenges vaguely offensive. Can I ask what exactly is informing your claims ?
And also I'm not American, I'm Italian, but I live in Australia, as you guessed from the timezone. and no one would love more for this to happen than me, in fact I think the EU should have started this process decades ago. I agree with your premise that the EU has to invest in this, it's an existential matter.
@Odoacre then you need not take offense. I am saying things that are outside of your window; I am not threatening your credibility. I respect what you are saying and empathize with the analysis that there would be quite a lot of work to do. My premise from the start has been that this is entirely achievable. Whether that will be achieved, I agree, is highly debatable and I do not claim to know what is going to happen.