The founder becomes CEO again: Octave Klaba has a clear mission for OVHcloud to grow in Europe and worldwide.
At the OVHcloud Summit 2025 in Paris, it was notable that Octave Klaba not only delivered the opening but also the closing speech. The founder, since October again CEO and chairman, used these two moments to outline a clear course: OVHcloud must grow into a global player in cloud and AI, with Europe as its home base and ecosystem as its engine.
This return to the operational role is no small detail. Klaba led OVHcloud until 2018 as CEO, remained closely involved in strategy and innovation as chairman, and has taken the daily helm again for three weeks after a reshuffle that combined the roles of chairman and CEO.
In a year when OVHcloud broke the symbolic revenue threshold of 1 billion euros, this is also a signal to the market and to European customers seeking alternatives to American hyperscalers.
Three Shocks and one Ambition
In his keynote, Klaba sharply outlines the context. According to him, Europe has been awakened by three recent shocks: the political awareness of digital dependency, the growing desire of companies for technological independence, and an AI revolution that accelerates everything. In this dynamic, OVHcloud wants to become “a cloud and AI provider that plays a systemic role.”
The same thought is also in his closing words: individual national initiatives are no longer enough; there is a need for players who build infrastructure, services, and governance on a European scale.
Europe has been awakened by three shocks: geopolitics, technological independence, and the AI revolution
Octave Klaba, CEO, founder, and chairman of OVHcloud
Concretely, this positioning mainly means that OVHcloud wants to profile itself even more explicitly as a trusted European standard: open technology, compliance-first, all without vendor lock-in.
AI Becomes Agentic (and Personal)
The first major announcement is immediately the most tangible for the average company: OVHcloud wants to bring AI agents to the workplace through so-called professional digital twins. A concrete example: existing OmisimO chats are powered by the SHAI coding agent, allowing users to build and orchestrate AI agents for daily tasks in a trusted environment.
Klaba describes it as a way to “free us from repetitive work and focus on where we create value.”
For CIOs, it is particularly relevant that OVHcloud links this to a platform approach: not just a chatbot, but an environment with governance, data control, and integration possibilities towards business apps. “Those struggling with shadow AI or fragmented copilots today will find a European counterpart here that fits as a building block in enterprise architectures.”
Inference Capacity with SambaNova
AI in production increasingly revolves around inference, and OVHcloud wants to provide its own answer to that. Through a
We want to deliver scalable inference with predictable pricing models
Octave Klaba, CEO, founder, and chairman of OVHcloud
For companies looking to industrialize AI workloads, such as real-time fraud detection, call center automation, or industrial vision applications, OVHcloud focuses on scalable inference with predictable pricing models. The latter is a classic OVH weapon in hyperscaler comparisons to stand up against the ubiquitous American providers.
‘get your SaaS Ready for AI’
Third pillar: OVHcloud explicitly targets software and SaaS builders with the program Get your SaaS ready for AI. It includes training, code-sharing, hackathons, and an integration route to the OmisimO marketplace.
With this, OVHcloud is not only trying to provide infrastructure but also to create an ecosystem where European SaaS players can more quickly integrate agentic AI.
For scale-ups and ISVs, this is interesting because it positions OVHcloud as a partner in product roadmaps, not just as a compute provider.
Quantum-as-a-Service, European Embedded
The fourth announcement looks further ahead: OVHcloud launches a Quantum Platform as a European Quantum-as-a-Service approach. Starting with Pasqal’s Orion Beta-QPU (100 qubits) and a roadmap to multiple European quantum providers by 2027. Klaba: “Quantum defines new economic boundaries, and we want to be at the forefront.”
It is not yet technology for tomorrow in the average IT environment, but it is a clear claim on a strategic layer in future high-performance and simulation projects.
Resilient Europe, Accelerating Internationally
Finally, Klaba linked the innovations to international expansion. After France and Italy, OVHcloud is now rolling out a 3-AZ region in Germany (Berlin), intended for higher availability and sovereign workloads.
At the same time, the company continues to invest outside Europe in growth markets, something Klaba has seen for years as a condition to become ‘systemic’ as a European player.
We link innovation to international expansion to become ‘systemic’ as a European player.
Octave Klaba, CEO, founder, and chairman of OVHcloud
In his closing remarks, it sounded almost personal. “The moment is particularly exciting… and geometric growth is not an option but a necessity.”
For those who have been following OVHcloud for a while, the message is clear: Klaba is back to pick up the pace. He wants European IT teams to come on board. Preferably not just as customers, but as part of an ecosystem that builds cloud, AI, and soon quantum ‘together’.