Scaleway is a French cloud computing and web hosting company founded in 1999 by Xavier Niel. It operates as a majority-owned subsidiary of the Iliad group. Scaleway provides physical dedicated servers, cloud computing architectures, and a complete cloud ecosystem primarily to European businesses and developers. It is recognized as a leading European cloud provider known for its multi-availability zone redundancy, smooth developer experience, and sustainable data centers powered entirely by renewable energy.
Scaleway began as Online SAS in 1999 focusing initially on web hosting and domain registration. Over the years, through acquisitions and internal growth, it expanded its hosting and cloud infrastructure capabilities. In 2015, the company launched the world's first Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform based on ARM BareMetal SSD servers at competitive pricing, gaining early traction. It continued to grow by adding x86 servers, launching new data centers, expanding cloud services in compute, storage, network, IoT, and AI domains. It has emerged as a primary brand under its parent Iliad, with sustained focus on innovation, new generation data centers, and a developer-centric approach.
Scaleway is a majority-owned subsidiary of Current valuation specifics are not public but positioning as a European cloud leader suggests significant scale and market valuation tied to Iliad’s broader telecommunications and digital infrastructure business.
Scaleway’s growth included acquisitions such as Alice ADSL and the consolidation of multiple Iliad-owned datacenter assets. Product-wise, it evolved from basic web hosting and dedicated servers into a comprehensive cloud platform with extensive compute and storage options, Kubernetes orchestration, serverless solutions, IoT, and AI capabilities. It actively invests in R&D, new generation datacenters, and innovative solutions, reflecting continuous expansion to meet modern cloud usage demands.
Recent expansions highlight the addition of Kubernetes-based container services, serverless architectures, GPU-accelerated AI instances, and enhanced multicloud network features. The company also focuses on transparency by publishing real-time PUE data from its datacenters and pursues certifications like HDS for hosting sensitive health data. It supports complex applications requiring multi-AZ redundancy and offers native tools for multi-cloud architecture management.
Scaleway’s culture revolves around sustainability, innovation, and developer-centricity. With 550+ talents, it cultivates a unique working environment including special working spaces ("Les Maisons") to foster creativity and collaboration. The company values transparency (e.g., public PUE metrics), energy efficiency (renewable energy powered centers), data sovereignty (allowing customers to choose where data resides), and European digital independence. It promotes an open science and open source approach, exemplified by its association with Kyutai, an independent AI research laboratory launched by Iliad.
Scaleway serves over 38,000 customers across 160 countries, ranging from startups to large enterprises. It positions itself as a European alternative to global hyperscalers like AWS and Google Cloud by emphasizing sovereignty, sustainability, and developer experience. Its community engagement includes events such as the ScaleDay’n Night IT event with over 1,200 participants, fostering networking and knowledge exchange within its ecosystem.
