Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an indispensable force, revolutionizing every facet of our lives—from healthcare and education to transportation and entertainment. Its impact is particularly profound in the telecommunications sector, where AI-driven innovations are redefining connectivity, enhancing user experiences, and enabling unprecedented levels of efficiency. As we stand on the brink of a new era, the integration of AI into our daily lives is no longer a luxury but a necessity, driving progress and fostering inclusivity on a global scale.

Ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris, the iliad Group is leading the charge in Europe’s AI revolution, reaffirming its commitment to becoming a market leader in this transformative field. With a staggering €3 billion investment dedicated to AI infrastructure, research, and applications, the Group is positioning itself at the forefront of innovation. From hyperscale data centers to cutting-edge AI computing capacity, and from groundbreaking partnerships to open-science research, the iliad Group is not just embracing AI—it is shaping its future. This text delves into the Group’s ambitious initiatives, highlighting how its investments and collaborations are democratizing AI, empowering businesses, and enhancing the lives of millions across Europe.

OpCore – Europe’s leading independent data center platform

OpCore, the subsidiary that operates the Group’s 13 data centers, will be investing €2.5 billion to step up its position as a European leader in hyperscale data centers, which are notably used for AI computing resources. To achieve this aim, the Group has forged a partnership with InfraVia, a major independent private equity firm in Europe. Thanks to this partnership, OpCore will have several hundred megawatts of capacity in the short-term and our long-term aim is to build several gigawatts of capacity across Europe.

Scaleway – the largest AI compute capacity available commercially in Europe

Through Scaleway – its B2B cloud provider subsidiary – the Group has also invested in the largest AI compute capacity available in the commercial market in Europe. This means that almost 5,000 top-tier GPUs are offered to companies for them to train and use their models. Among the big names who’ve put their trust in Scaleway are Mistral AI, H and Photoroom. Thanks to Scaleway, the best open-source models – Llama (Meta), Moshi (Kyutai), and now DeepSeek – are available for all companies in a sovereign and secure cloud environment.

Free and Mistral AI – a partnership that democratizes AI

Today, Free and Mistral AI announced a partnership that’s unprecedented in France. By teaming up with Mistral AI, Free has become the country’s first telco to offer all of its mobile subscribers an AI assistant, with an exclusive 12 months’ free-of-charge offer1 for le Chat Pro – the new premium version of the AI assistant developed by Mistral AI. This means that Free’s 15.5 million subscribers will be able to use, at no extra cost, a state-of-the-art AI tool developed by a French champion and European leader in AI.

Kyutai – Europe’s first private-initiative independent lab dedicated to AI open science

Scientific research has a fundamental role to play in building the AI universe, which is evolving at lightning speed. That’s why, towards the end of 2023, the iliad Group co-founded Kyutai – a nonprofit open-science AI research lab, injecting €100 million into this venture at the time of its creation. The open-source model, which the group has always advocated, is a crucial tool in the AI race, and is now supported by all of the market’s players. In July 2024, the team at Kyutai – comprising some of the best AI researchers in the world – unveiled Moshi, an open-source AI model with unprecedented voice capabilities.

Recently, Kyutai launched Hibiki, a ground-breaking voice technology for simultaneous translation. Hibiki, which means echo in Japanese – translates in real-time while preserving the speaker’s voice and optimally adapting its pace to the semantic content of the source speech. It produces a simultaneous oral and written translation in the target language. Currently trained for
translation from French to English, Hibiki is exceeding state-of-the-art performance in this task, in terms of translation quality, speaker voice fidelity and naturalness. Thanks to its simple inference process, it is compatible with real-time on-device usage. This launch marks a new milestone in voice technologies by opening up extraordinary opportunities for communication and
accessibility.

Thomas Reynaud, CEO of the iliad Group, said:

“For several years now at the iliad Group we’ve believed in the power of artificial intelligence, which is why we decided to devote the necessary resources to it. We’re investing €3 billion across the entire value chain – from data centers to computing power and open-science research, and we’re democratizing AI through our partnership
with Mistral. The reason we’ve taken so many initiatives over the past three years is because we know that it’s a decisive time, when our society’s future is being played out.”