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

By Leo Marchandon

PARIS, June 17 (Reuters) - OVHcloud plans to bid frontier AI models - the astir advanced, large-scale systems built from scratch utilizing ‌vast information and computing powerfulness - its CEO said connected Wednesday, ‌positioning the steadfast arsenic a imaginable European challenger to Mistral.

The determination marks a displacement for OVHcloud, ​Europe's largest unreality provider, arsenic governments and companies question alternatives to U.S. and Chinese AI systems - a hunt made much pressing by the caller abrupt switch-off of Anthropic's top-tier models.

"It became rather wide to america that if we don't ‌master this technology, we ⁠can't warrant our future," OVHcloud CEO Octave Klaba told Reuters astatine the VivaTech conference.

Klaba said the economics of processing specified ⁠cutting-edge models person shifted, citing advances successful chips, grooming techniques and synthetic data. A task that mightiness erstwhile person outgo astir 1 cardinal euros ($1.2 billion) could present ​be ​attempted for 150 cardinal to 200 cardinal ​euros, helium said.

He described the ‌industry arsenic entering a "second wave," with caller entrants gathering connected groundwork laid by firms specified arsenic OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral. He added OVHcloud would not usage lawsuit information to bid its models.

The institution plans to motorboat a household of models alternatively than a azygous system. "We tin intelligibly spot that the ‌major players merchandise aggregate models, due to the fact that each ​model is built for thing specific," Klaba said. "There's ​no 1 exemplary that does ​all the magic alone."

He pointed to DragonLLM, a precocious acquired ‌startup, adding that pre-training has been ​completed connected a ​model utilizing Jupiter, Europe's fastest supercomputer, but cautioned that OVHcloud was not yet acceptable to marque elaborate show claims.

OVHcloud intends to open-source its ​models erstwhile they scope ‌sufficient performance. "We'll spot erstwhile we're bully capable to unfastened root them, ​but that is so the goal," helium said.

($1 = 0.8627 euros)

(Reporting by ​Leo Marchandon. Editing by Mark Potter)