France's Bull doubles supercomputer output to power Europe's AI ambitions
State-owned Bull has reopened its expanded Angers factory, doubling supercomputer output to 12 racks a month, as Europe races to close its AI computing gap with the US and China.
Bull, the state-owned French maker of Europe’s fastest supercomputers, has reopened its expanded factory in Angers, doubling its production capacity as Europe bolsters its AI computing power.
The European Union has committed €7 billion ($7.87 billion) over 2021–2027 to a network of supercomputers aimed at closing the compute gap with the United States and China. Bull’s plant in Angers is the only factory in Europe dedicated to building these machines.
Chief executive Emmanuel Le Roux told Reuters the company has received more orders this year than ever before, and has won 15 of the 18 tenders issued by EuroHPC — the EU body that co-funds Europe’s supercomputer network with member states — against rivals including Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Airbus inaugurated Bull-built supercomputers in Toulouse and Hamburg this year under a five-year deal worth close to €100 million that tripled the planemaker’s simulation capacity. Cloud operator OVHcloud and European Commission-backed Domyn are both attempting to train frontier-class AI models on Bull’s JUPITER system alongside other companies Bull declined to name.
The Angers expansion cost €80 million. Output has already doubled from six racks a month to 12, and the plant can be boosted to 24 next year. France’s 94-rack order — a system named after computer scientist Alice Recoque — is being assembled in parallel with LUMI-AI, Finland’s €388 million system and Bull’s biggest-ever contract. The two orders could not have been built alongside each other before the expansion.
Sources: Reuters; Euronext/Reuters reprint
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