He knows the inner workings of American cloud infrastructures inside out. And that is precisely why Synfonium chose him to replace Olvier Abecassis
Starting May 11, Boris Lecoeur will take the helm of the holding company founded by Octave Klaba, OVHcloud’s chief, which brings together under one roof the search engine Qwant and Shadow, the cloud gaming and on-demand computing platform.
The new leader has a mission. Since its inception, Synfonium has led the rebuilding and consolidation of these two sovereign tech pillars: an independent search technology on the one hand, and a large-scale computing infrastructure on the other.
The CV That Makes Sense
A trained engineer with a solid business background, Boris Lecoeur founded and built AWS France (for more than nine years) before launching Cloudflare in France and leading it for more than five years.
“His profile, at the crossroads of technology, product, and business development, is fully aligned with the growth ambitions we are pursuing,” says Octave Klaba.
After rebuilding these two core technologies—search and compute infrastructure—Synfonium aims to carve out a place in the B2B markets for sovereign technology solutions. The mission of its new leader is to chart the path.
“What convinced me is the rare combination of a mature technology, talented teams, and a growth potential that remains largely untapped. My mission: help them cross the threshold of industrialization and conquer the European market,” he stated on LinkedIn.
Two Pillars, One Ambition
On one side, Qwant is accelerating its industrialization around Staan, its sovereign web-search API intended for AI players, and European Search Perspective, the joint venture with Ecosia to build the first 100% European web index. “A rare, neutral, and verifiable building block,” insists the new CEO. “This level of expertise, built over more than ten years, does not happen by chance.” The consumer engine itself is being enhanced with AI features (automatically generated summaries, a conversational interface) to stay competitive with Google and Perplexity.
On the other hand, Shadow is betting on its GPU compute capacity to attract enterprises and developers seeking a sovereign and competitive alternative for AI inference. The platform aims to monetize its idle capacity during off-peak hours, an approach that could appeal to European startups in search of affordable computing power.
A Favorable Context
The appointment comes in a favorable context. The question of digital sovereignty has never been as prominent on European political and industrial agendas, between geopolitical frictions with the United States and the rising regulation of AI. “Who controls research, computing, and data controls a crucial share of our common future,” writes Boris Lecoeur.
Against MSPs and well-entrenched French players, the road ahead will be long.
Photo : © DR
