Scaleway Makes the Case for a Cloud Strategy Built on Control

There’s a long-held idea in enterprise technology that people who make safe, conventional procurement decisions stay employed. Today, that logic is playing out as procurement teams and IT leaders choose dominant global cloud platforms not because they’ve done a thorough evaluation, but because it feels like the default.

Solidigm’s Ace Stryker and I recently sat down with Albane Bruyas, chief operating officer of Scaleway, who made a compelling case that the “safe” choice may come with unexpected risks, and that having a backup plan is critical. With 25 years of cloud experience behind it, Scaleway is working to demonstrate that a homegrown European complement to the global hyperscalers is essential for organizations that care about control, cost transparency, and long-term resilience.

More Than Sovereign: The Case for Full-Stack Control

Scaleway describes itself as both a sovereign European cloud provider and a neocloud built for AI infrastructure. For Albane, however, the word “sovereign” only gets you so far.

“What is very interesting for our clients is that we sell full autonomy,” she said. “We have control on all the value chain. This is what makes the pure difference for our clients.”

That control extends across software, hardware, network transit, and pricing. Scaleway operates within a major French telecommunications conglomerate, which gives the company ownership over connectivity that most cloud providers must outsource. The result, Albane argues, is a level of transparency and pricing stability that organizations cannot get from vendors who depend on third-party components throughout their stack.

Sustainability is also woven into this argument. Because Scaleway built its data centers, primarily in France, it has been able to optimize for energy efficiency. That includes tracking and reducing carbon footprint at the hardware level, a capability made more precise by the company’s participation in the Open Compute Project.

A Procurement Argument Rooted in Risk

Before joining Scaleway, Bruyas worked in industrial procurement, and she brings that lens directly to conversations with enterprise buyers. In industry, she notes, you always ensure you have at least two suppliers for physical goods. Her message is straightforward: operating differently with your digital suppliers doesn’t eliminate risk. It invites it.

“In the digital world, people are just forgetting that their principal strategic supplier is a unique supplier they cannot move out from,” she said. “There is no solution if there is a crash. There is no solution if different prices come out. No solution if there is an external government that asks for data. You have no choice.”

Her advice to organizations anchored to a single hyperscaler is practical, not confrontational: “You will never be fired because you choose one of the scalers. So it’s just like, test an alternative. You need to have one, and you will be happily surprised,” she said.

In a similar spirit, Scaleway’s active participation in the Open Compute Project is not simply a technical preference; it is a supply chain hedge. By building on open hardware standards, the company can source components from multiple vendors, reducing dependence on any single manufacturer and creating competitive pricing leverage.

“If you have the most open hardware you can, then you have the capacity to buy from different suppliers,” Albane explained. “If you have the capacity to buy from different suppliers, you can have a better price, and you can have more capacity because you can go to different places.”

Building for an Agentic AI World

As AI workloads shift from simple inference queries toward longer, more complex agentic workflows, the infrastructure requirements change substantially. More context, more memory, tighter latency budgets, and greater demand for diverse compute options are all part of that transition.

Scaleway’s strategy is, once again, to embrace sourcing from different providers. The company offers multiple GPU types, is actively collaborating with next-generation chip designers, and maintains capacity for CPU-based inference where appropriate. Albane noted that Scaleway has a history of being early to emerging architectures, having been among the first providers to offer Arm-based servers.

“We want to continue to be really at this level of technology where we can put something in place that nobody has,” she said.

The TechArena Take

Scaleway occupies an unusual position in the cloud market: mature enough to offer a full public cloud catalog, yet structured in a way that gives it operational visibility and pricing control that most providers lack. Albane makes a credible case that full-stack ownership is not just a differentiator in the marketing sense but a concrete operational advantage, particularly for organizations that need cost predictability, data residency assurance, and a genuine second-source option. Enterprise buyers that prioritize control and transparency can benefit by making a strategic choice to diversify their cloud strategy before vendor dependency becomes a liability.