France buys supercomputer maker Bull from Atos for 404 mln euros

Atos SE

31/03/2026 16:54

By Mathieu Rosemain

PARIS, March 31 (Reuters) - France finalised the acquisition of supercomputer maker Bull from troubled Atos, the IT group said on Tuesday, securing state control of a company whose machines are used to simulate the country's nuclear arsenal.

The deal, first announced in July 2025, will make the French state Bull's sole shareholder via the country's state shareholding agency APE. When Atos acquired Bull in 2014, the deal valued the group's equity at approximately 620 million euros, indicating a loss in value during Bull's years inside the struggling IT conglomerate.

Here are the key details:

The deal value of 404 mln euros ($466 million) includes debt and 104 mln euros in earn-outs tied to performance conditions, Atos said

Bull groups together high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum as well as business computing and artificial intelligence divisions

Bull employs 3,000 people worldwide, about half of them in France, with 2025 revenue of 720 mln euros

France, one of three nuclear powers in NATO along with Britain and the United States, stopped real-world nuclear testing in 1996. To ensure its deterrent would remain effective, it committed to a simulation programme requiring high-performance computing, a role Bull has filled for three decades, an official at the French finance ministry said Tuesday.

Bull built the Jupiter supercomputer inaugurated in Jülich, Germany, Europe's first machine to hit the exascale milestone, and will build the future Alice Recoque machine, set to be France's largest supercomputer, the official said

An exascale supercomputer is a next‑generation machine capable of performing at least one billion‑billion calculations per second, making it powerful enough to model complex phenomena such as climate systems, advanced materials or large‑scale machine-learning.

About 40% of components in Jupiter are of European origin; the target for Alice Recoque is around 70%, with a longer-term goal of exceeding 80%, a source at Bull said

No private co-investor is entering the capital alongside the state at this stage, the official at the ministry said, adding that earlier talks with private investors had not led to a deal.

($1 = 0.8678 euros)

(1 euro = 1.0000 euros)

($1 = 0.8681 euros)

(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain;
Editing by Anousha Sakoui)

((Mathieu.Rosemain@thomsonreuters.com; +33 1 8098 1239; Reuters Messaging: mathieu.rosemain.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net; Twitter: https://twitter.com/MathieuRosemain))