French startup PoliCloud has raised €7.5 million ($8.8m) to build out a network of Edge data centers in Europe for cloud and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

The Cannes-based firm will use the cash to hire an operating team and “grow its business globally with a focus on public entities in Europe.”

It has received funding in a round led by VC firm Global Ventures, with participation from MI8 Limited, a Hong Kong multi-family office; OneRagtime, a Paris-based venture capital firm; Inria, France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology; and other private investors.

PoliCloud says it provides state-of-the-art distributed cloud infrastructure for secure storage and HPC. The company’s operating model combines its hardware and infrastructure with distributed storage and computing software from cloud provider Hivenet to provide a localized cloud offering to customers, delivered from containerized data centers.

The company believes this can help businesses reduce reliance on the US-based hyperscale providers and meet the digital sovereignty requirements of European countries.

David Gurlé, founder of PoliCloud, said: “PoliCloud is meeting a critical market demand for sovereign cloud infrastructure that is not only secure and abundant but also eco-responsible. Our unique edge computing capabilities deliver significant benefits to both public and private sector users.

“The time is right for a new European solution that reduces reliance on US cloud providers and offers affordable, scalable computing power, especially as AI adoption accelerates.”

Gurlé is a fintech entrepreneur who founded PoliCloud in February 2025. It claims to have sold four systems already, and predicts it will have revenue of €6 million ($7.04m) by the end of the year.

Details of the hardware inside PoliCloud’s data centers were not revealed, though its website suggests each of the Edge data centers will feature 104 GPUs from an unnamed vendor. The announcement said the company will have access to more than 1,000 GPUs by the end of the year, rising to 10,000 by the end of 2026.

The news marks the latest investment in French AI infrastructure, which has attracted billions of Euros in funding over recent months. Check out the latest edition of DCD Magazine, out now, for an in-depth look at the French AI market.