The French government has sent a letter of intent to the IT services company Atos, with the aim of acquiring all its activities that the state considers strategic, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday, Reuters reports. The multinational Atos is a giant of the IT industry, with a presence in several countries, including Romania, informs News.ro.
tos, whose shares have fallen over the past three years, provides communications for the French military and secret services and makes servers to make supercomputers capable of processing large amounts of data for research or to develop the nascent artificial intelligence industry.
Other powerful players enter the game
“This weekend we submitted a letter of intent to acquire all the sovereign activities of Atos,” said Le Maire in an interview with the French news channel LCI.
Le Maire added that he wanted other industrial groups to join the French state’s potential bid for the activities, without elaborating.
The consortium, led by France’s state-owned APE agency, will also include other “sovereign French players,” Le Maire said, declining to name them.
There has been speculation in the French media that defense groups such as Thales and Dassault Aviation could take part in a plan to salvage the assets, which include Atos’ supercomputers and some of its most sensitive cyber security activities.
