2. Alternative AI cloud providers and their strategies in the EU market Europe’s pivot towards sovereign AI infrastructure has creat­ed a market opening for private actors that want to capture part of the AI cloud market. This has created unconvention ­al market dynamics in the European market, in which existing dependence on American hyperscalers has long made it difficult for regional alternatives to break through. New AI-specific compute providers(called neoclouds) have emerged, along with existing cloud and telecommunica­tions providers, which are transitioning to the AI compute space. These providers seek to strategically differentiate themselves through sovereign or specialised offerings that explicitly reduce dependencies on non-European providers. They represent pivotal intermediaries in achieving the EU’s political objective of alternative computational infra­structure. As such, their corporate strategies, incentives and dependencies have implications for the location, financing and control over AI cloud resources in the EU. 2.1 Market actors We sampled 19 alternative AI cloud providers that are oper ­ating in the EU market, meaning that they have current or planned AI cloud availability within EU member states and the European Economic Area. To derive our sample, we considered global and regional market dominance, recent public announcements as well as prevalence in EU policy Background of AI cloud neocloud providers included in the analysis(n=19) Table 2 Provider name CoreWeave Crusoe Exoscale Fluidstack GCore Labs Genesis Cloud Gmbh Hetzner IONOS Mistral Compute Nebius Nebul NScale OVHcloud Scaleway Sesterce Taiga Cloud UpCloud Vast.ai Verda*** Neocloud type Neocloud Giant Neocloud Giant European Traditional Cloud Emerging Neocloud European Traditional Cloud Emerging Neocloud European Traditional Cloud European Traditional Cloud Emerging Neocloud Neocloud Giant Emerging Neocloud Emerging Neocloud European Traditional Cloud Emerging Neocloud Emerging Neocloud Emerging Neocloud European Traditional Cloud Emerging Neocloud Emerging Neocloud Company name CoreWeave Crusoe Telekom Austria Fluidstack GCore Labs Genesis Cloud Gmbh Hetzner Online GmbH IONOS Mistral AI Nebius Group Nebul Nscale OVH Groupe SA Illiad Group(parent compa­ny) Sesterce Northern Data(being bought by Rumble) (DCD, 2025) UpCloud Vast.ai Verda HQ location Global HQ in New Jersey, US; European HQ in London Denver, US Lausanne, Switzerland London, UK Contern, Luxembourg Munich, Germany Gunzenhausen, Germany Montabaur, Germany and P­ hiladelphia, US Paris, France Netherlands Amsterdam, Netherlands London, UK Roubaix, France Paris, France European presence Yes Yes(planned) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Marseille, France Yes Dublin, Ireland Yes Helsinki, Finland Yes Los Angeles, US Yes Helsinki, Finland Yes * Became IONOS in 2020, splitting from the webhosting part of the company ** Nebius split from Russian firm Yandex in 2024. *** formerly Datacrunch Founded 2017 2018 2011 2017 2014 2018 2018 1988* 2025 2024** 2022 2023 1999 1999 2018 2023 2011 2018 2020 Alternative AI cloud providers and their strategies in the EU market 15