As Europe grapples with the realities of relying on digital infrastructure controlled from outside the bloc, HiPEAC partner In the early 2010s, Europe and the rest of the world experienced a cloud explosion. Microsoft, Google, IBM and others joined Amazon and launched cloud service platforms. Simultaneously, NASA and Rackspace initiated OpenStack, which remains the most popular open-source cloud software to this day.
The key promise of cloud was speed, efficiency and scale. The idea was simple: let engineers create value instead of maintaining servers. Cloud became a utility – the same as internet access, water or electricity. The provider of the utility was not a concern, especially since the providers were primarily based in the United States. This attitude reflected strategic relations and the zeitgeist.
The dominance of hyperscalers – an industry term for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google that underscores their immense scale – in the European cloud market stems from a combination of factors. Their early entry, deep access to capital, operational agility, and readiness to embrace risk provided a significant competitive edge. Over the past decade, these three companies swiftly captured market share, becoming virtually synonymous with the concept of ‘public cloud’.
However, their influence extends far beyond cloud infrastructure alone. As hyperscalers expanded, they leveraged their scale and technological capabilities to integrate vertically and horizontally across the digital value chain. For example, Google evolved into the world’s largest digital advertising exchange, while other hyperscalers diversified into platforms, productivity tools, and critical digital services. This has allowed big tech companies to entrench themselves not just as cloud providers, but as indispensable providers of essential services across multiple facets of the economy, amplifying their presence and deepening their penetration throughout society.
This combination of the all-encompassing role of Big Tech and shifting geopolitical dynamics sparked debate and concern. Europe’s pivot began when cloud stopped being ‘someone else’s IT’ and became the control layer for essential services. Legal uncertainty around cross-border access, the everyday costs of lock-in, and geopolitical tensions reframed the question. It became less about compliance paperwork and more about agency: who can reach the systems, who can change them, and how quickly Europe can exit.
That is why Brussels is encoding sovereignty – ultimately into regulations, first into procurement. In October 2025 the European Commission launched a € 180 million ‘sovereign cloud’ competition under the Cloud III Dynamic Purchasing System and attached a Cloud Sovereignty Framework to it. The framework breaks sovereignty into eight objectives – from strategic anchoring and legal jurisdiction to operational control, supply-chain transparency, technological openness, security, environmental considerations and EUlaw compliance – and converts those dimensions into a quantified ‘sovereignty score’ used in award evaluation.
At the European Digital Sovereignty Summit in Berlin on 18 November 2025, the same logic moved from tender documents to political narrative. Cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) were framed as competitiveness and resilience issues, and leaders argued openly for reducing dependencies through European infrastructure choices.
Here is a bigger story. Once sovereignty becomes a repeatable method – score, certify, audit, and preserve the right to switch – it spreads beyond cloud. Space shows the trajectory. The EU’s Space Strategy for Security and Defence explicitly targets technological sovereignty by reducing strategic dependencies, and IRIS2 is presented as secure connectivity supporting Europe’s autonomy and digital sovereignty. Even access to orbit is now treated in similar terms, with the EU emphasizing European launchers such as Ariane 6 and Vega C for Galileo and Copernicus infrastructure.