The Île-de-France Region, Scaleway, VSORA and ZML commit to laying the foundations for the next generation of AI chips in Europe
This unprecedented commitment — a European first that brings together Île-de-France players across the entire value chain of Artificial Intelligence infrastructure — aims to deploy and commercialize the first sovereign offering based on VSORA’s Jotunn8 processor.
PARIS, June 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At the VivaTech trade show, the Île-de-France Region, Scaleway, VSORA and ZML signed a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the development and deployment in Europe of next-generation AI inference chips. This unprecedented alliance forms the first concrete link in a sovereign European value chain in artificial intelligence: from silicon design to operation within cloud infrastructure. The project will thus enable the deployment of high-performance sovereign infrastructure for artificial intelligence in Île-de-France — a European first.
A partnership to counter technological dependence
Europe today imports nearly all of its advanced AI chips. Faced with the accelerating global race for chips and the growing geopolitical risks weighing on supply chains, this partnership responds to a strategic imperative: structuring demand for advanced AI chips designed in Europe, and developing sovereign AI infrastructure in Europe.
VSORA is a French semiconductor company specializing in AI inference processors. Backed by the European Innovation Council (EIC), it is developing a next-generation architecture designed to make AI inference more performant, more energy-efficient and economically viable at scale. Its Jotunn8 processor — currently in manufacturing and presented at the TSMC Europe Technology Symposium in May 2026 — paves the way for a new generation of AI infrastructure that reconciles performance, energy efficiency and cost control.
Scaleway, a European cloud and AI operator, commits to deploying the first servers to be produced by VSORA and to validating the architecture in production. Scaleway thus plays a critical enabler role: delivering a truly sovereign commercial offering, so that European players can strengthen their technological-independence strategy.
ZML, the designer of the world's fastest and most universal AI inference software layer, will integrate its technology into the Jotunn8 as soon as the first chips are released. This integration will enable the native execution of any AI model on VSORA's architecture, without porting or rewriting, while leveraging the full performance intended by the chip designer.
The Île-de-France Region, at the heart of Europe’s densest hub for digital infrastructure, intends to drive a datacenter deployment strategy founded on responsible land use, environmental exemplarity, technological sovereignty, innovation and the creation of regional value. The Region intends to assert its leadership in AI across Europe by supporting the emergence of a sovereign and innovative ecosystem around datacenters, continuing and strengthening its support for the technological building blocks of the value chain, particularly in the strategic segments of semiconductors and compute infrastructure.
From R&D to industrialization: the key role of European demand
This partnership rests on an economic logic that public R&D support mechanisms alone cannot activate: commercial demand.
For a fabless company, industrial viability depends first and foremost on the existence of market outlets — firm orders, deployment commitments, recurring revenue — far more than on innovation subsidies.
By committing to integrate VSORA chips into its infrastructure, Scaleway provides this structuring market signal, which the Region’s support helps make accessible by reducing the adoption risk inherent in any solution at its first commercialization stage. ZML further reinforces this market signal by commercializing VSORA’s compute power through a packaged, ultra-competitive inference offering. Beyond the partnership itself, this initiative sends a strong message to the entire ecosystem: European demand can now be served by AI chips designed in Europe.
A pioneering initiative in a favorable European context
This partnership comes at a decisive political moment. On June 3, 2026, the European Commission published the Technological Sovereignty Package, which includes the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA). These texts explicitly call for strengthening advanced chip design capabilities in Europe by supporting fabless companies such as VSORA, and envisage increasing the visibility granted to regions that implement a coordinated, long-term strategy to host, attract and develop semiconductor-related investment.
The partnership signed today prefigures the mechanisms that could, tomorrow, be put in place with the support of the European Commission.
Quotes
Valérie Pécresse, President of the Île-de-France Region:
“Île-de-France is not merely hosting the artificial intelligence revolution: it is building it. By supporting this project, entirely designed within our region, the Region takes a strong stand for technological sovereignty. Our chips, our infrastructure, our AI. This is our response to the challenge before us: reclaiming our digital and technological independence through innovation. Île-de-France is ready to be the catalyst for this ambition, for France and for Europe.”
Khaled Maalej, CEO of VSORA:
“With Jotunn8, we have developed one of the most advanced AI inference technologies. We are delighted to launch this initiative with Scaleway, ZML and the Île-de-France Region, as it marks a decisive milestone: the shift from leading European innovation to its deployment in real-world infrastructure. By bringing together the key players in the value chain, from chip to cloud, this partnership creates the conditions needed for the emergence of a genuine European AI industry.”
Damien Lucas, CEO of Scaleway:
“This partnership is a first. By committing to integrate the first VSORA Jotunn8 racks into its infrastructure — with the support of the Île-de-France Region and of ZML to provide the AI inference stack — Scaleway is backing the ecosystem by directing part of its orders toward the promising European companies developing tomorrow’s components.
Steeve Morin, CEO of ZML:
“The Jotunn8 is the best inference processor on the market today. When the silicon is available and the infrastructure is in place, there is only one thing to do: connect the stack and run the models. That's what we're doing. VSORA manufactures the chip. Scaleway operates the racks and the infrastructure. ZML unifies the stack. The Île-de-France Region anchors the whole project in the long term. It is a first and a reproducible model. It is an infrastructure, designed to be deployed on a larger scale with all the players who choose his path of excellence.”
About the signatories
Media contacts Région Île-de-France : presse@iledefrance.fr
About VSORA
VSORA is a French semiconductor company developing AI inference infrastructure designed to make AI deployment economically viable.
Its inference processor, Jotunn8, is purpose-built to overcome the memory wall, one of the main barriers to efficient AI inference, enabling operators to run AI with significantly lower infrastructure costs and energy consumption.
Following a successful tape-out in 2025, Jotunn8 is entering manufacturing. Designed for datacenter-scale inference workloads, it delivers the performance, efficiency, and economics required to scale AI in the real world.
Headquartered in France, VSORA is backed by the European Innovation Council (EIC) and works with leading industry partners, including TSMC and Global Unichip Corp (GUC), to bring next-generation AI processors from architecture to silicon.
Website: https://vsora.com/
Media contact: Céline Bruggeman - +33 6 87 52 71 99 - cbruggeman@actus.fr
About Scaleway
Scaleway is the European provider of sovereign cloud and AI, offering a secure, transparent and sustainable platform. We support organizations of all sizes through open, independent technologies and continuous innovation, so they can design and deploy their projects at their own pace and according to their own priorities.
A subsidiary of the iliad Group, Scaleway combines decades of infrastructure expertise with the agility of a next-generation technology company. Drawing on a constantly expanding network of datacenters across Europe, Scaleway offers a comprehensive portfolio of high-performance cloud services, ranging from virtual machines and advanced data-management solutions to cloud-native infrastructure and AI-optimized supercomputers. By championing open standards and operating within a fully European framework, Scaleway provides a secure and transparent cloud environment able to meet the highest digital-sovereignty requirements.
Website: https://www.scaleway.com/en/
Press contact: presse@scaleway.com
About ZML
ZML is an AI engineering lab that designs the standard execution layer between models and the underlying hardware.
Where today's AI models are tied to specific chips and software stacks, ZML's open-source technology allows users to run any model on any computer architecture, including GPUs, TPUs, DPUs, CPUs, and specialized accelerators, from a single code base, without rewriting, without vendor lock-in, or loss of performance.
By making intelligence portable from one hardware to another, ZML is laying the foundations for a world where AI is faster, more accessible, and can be integrated everywhere.
Founded in 2023 by Steeve Morin, previously Vice President of Engineering at Zenly (acquired by Snap) as well as holding technical roles at Google and Exalead, ZML is backed by leading investors.
Website: https://zml.ai/
Media contact: hello@zml.ai
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