Airbus’s pursuit of a European sovereign cloud signals shift in aerospace data strategy

Europe’s largest aerospace group is set to tender for a €50 million sovereign cloud contract, aiming to move critical systems away from US providers amid increasing emphasis on European data control and strategic autonomy.

Europe’s largest aerospace group is preparing to put sensitive parts of its IT estate out to tender as it seeks a “digitally sovereign” cloud governed entirely by European rules, a move that could see it shift work away from major US provide...

According to reporting by The Register, Airbus is preparing a request for proposals in early January for a large-scale migration of core systems currently hosted on its own infrastructure. The tender, for a contract understood to be worth more than €50 million and lasting up to ten years, would cover enterprise resource planning, manufacturing execution, customer relationship management and product lifecycle management platforms that hold aircraft designs. Airbus expects to pick a provider before the summer and is emphasising predictable pricing across the term. The Register reported Airbus internally assesses only an 80 per cent chance of finding a European cloud partner that meets its requirements.

“I need a sovereign cloud because part of the information is extremely sensitive from a national and European perspective,” Catherine Jestin, Airbus’s executive vice president of digital, told The Register. “We want to ensure this information remains under European control.”

The drive to cloud is partly technological. Major enterprise vendors such as SAP are increasingly delivering new capabilities through cloud platforms, most notably S/4HANA, pushing customers to move core workloads if they want access to the latest software. At the same time, Airbus’s existing reliance on US-based services runs up against political and legal concerns. The CLOUD Act, passed by the United States in 2018, allows US authorities to compel American technology firms to produce data held overseas, a point that has fuelled calls in Europe for greater control over critical infrastructure and data.

Microsoft has acknowledged those limits in public proceedings. In a French court hearing last July the company said it could not guarantee full data sovereignty under the CLOUD Act; its representative Anton Carniaux was reported as saying: “Absolutely, by respecting this process. But again, this has not affected any European company, or a public sector body, since we have been publishing these transparency reports.” Microsoft has also said it has not received US government requests for data stored on its European servers.

Airbus’s cloud tender sits alongside a broader corporate push towards European strategic autonomy. In October 2025 Airbus signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Leonardo and Thales to combine their space activities into a new company expected to be operational by 2027, with an anticipated annual turnover of about €6.5 billion and some 25,000 employees, a move the company framed as strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy in space. Earlier in 2025 Airbus Defence and Space deepened cooperation with Quantum Systems on tactical aerial reconnaissance to bolster technological sovereignty, and Airbus has been involved in a May 2023 consortium with Eutelsat, Hispasat, SES and Thales Alenia Space to respond to the European Commission’s IRIS² satellite constellation tender.

Defence programmes led by Airbus similarly underline the shift. The Eurodrone programme, developed with Dassault Aviation and Leonardo and progressing towards its Critical Design Review, is being positioned as a domestically produced Remotely Piloted Aircraft System to boost Europe’s independent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; Airbus and OCCAR signed the Eurodrone contract in February 2022, which industry data at the time said would create thousands of high‑tech jobs and strengthen European industrial sovereignty.

Airbus executives have signalled they are weighing both legal and technical criteria. Jestin has said she is waiting for clearer guidance from European regulators on whether a sovereign cloud would truly shield the company from extraterritorial laws and whether services could be disrupted if geopolitical tensions escalate. The company is also sceptical about whether European providers can match the scale and breadth of US hyperscalers; internally Airbus has put the chance of finding a suitable partner today at roughly 80 per cent.

The tender will test whether Europe’s cloud industry can deliver at scale or whether a hybrid approach, combining European infrastructure with sovereignty guarantees from non‑US or US vendors, will be the pragmatic outcome. US cloud firms have in recent years offered sovereignty‑focused packages for customers in Europe, but the legal question posed by the CLOUD Act and the political backdrop since the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January, which has reintroduced uncertainty into transatlantic relations, continue to sharpen Airbus’s calculus.

For Airbus, the decision is both strategic and operational: beyond seeking to keep sensitive data within a legal framework it trusts, the company must ensure continuity of access to modern enterprise software and the ability to run complex engineering workloads at scale. Whether Europe’s cloud sector can align, scale and meet Airbus’s timetable and technical requirements remains to be seen; industry observers say the company’s procurement will be an important test of the continent’s ability to offer an alternative to US‑dominated cloud services.

Source: Noah Wire Services