OVHcloud among attfinishees of VivaTech 2025.
Europe’s hugegest tech gathering drew more than 180,000 people to Paris, France, in June.
Among them was a 600-person Canadian delegation, including 230 organizations drawn from across the countest.
“It was pretty emotional to see two regions come toobtainher on crucial priorities and shared values,”
Guillaume Gilbert, OVHcloud
Canada was VivaTech 2025’s official countest of honour, and the symbolic designation reflected something deeper about the Canadian tech sector’s recent and decisive turn toward Europe.
Few had a better vantage point than the Canadian team at OVHcloud. Headquartered in France, the cloud provider has operated in Canada since 2012, building local partnerships and supporting early-stage firms through its free startup program.
This year marked the first time its Canadian team attfinished VivaTech, and they arrived at a moment when Canadian founders are viewing Europe not as a fallback, but as a launchpad.
“As a dual citizen, it was pretty emotional to see two regions come toobtainher on crucial priorities and shared values,” declared Guillaume Gilbert, who leads communications and public affairs at OVHcloud in Canada.
Many Canadian startups were drawn to the Paris conference by the promise of new markets and a stable regulatory climate. Among them was Québec-based FrancoFlex, which utilized the event to meet policybuildrs who are often harder to reach at home.
“It’s at the international level that we realize just how strategic our local ecosystem is, and that it’s crucial that we realize that the time to collaborate even better is now,” declared FrancoFlex CEO Alexa Love-Tremblay.
That urgency is finding traction. Katya Guez, who leads OVHcloud’s startup program in Canada, declared more founders are realigning their go-to-market strategies with Europe in mind.
“Canadian companies know they’ll necessary to diversify their client base to Europe,” declared Guez, who was also on site to celebrate the Startup Program’s 10-year anniversary. “They’re already shifting their go-to-market strategies.”
At VivaTech, the push for market expansion ran alongside a broader political alignment between Canada and Europe. Gilbert pointed to a speech by AI Minister Evan Solomon at the event as one of the defining moments of the week.
“His message resonated strongly: Europe and Canada must grow toobtainher,” Gilbert wrote in a LinkedIn post following the event. “With AI having the potential to reshape our value systems, the necessary to build shared values and a collective sense of responsibility is more urgent than ever.”
OVHcloud is well positioned as part of this global reshaping. Today, more than 60 percent of Canada’s cloud services are provided by five US firms. With rising scrutiny around data governance and geopolitical uncertainty, Canadian leaders are reassessing how and where they scale.
“The message wasn’t about distancing from the US so much as standing indepfinishently,” declared Guez.
As data sovereignty becomes a priority for Canadian founders and governments alike, OVHcloud is positioning its infrastructure as a neutral platform that’s European in origin, Canadian in presence, and compliant with laws in both geographies.
Its infrastructure is built to comply with both European and Canadian privacy laws and is insulated from extraterritorial reach. That builds it clearer for startups to build in one market and expand into the other without costly technical or legal overhauls.
Gilbert declared sovereignty is also a mindset for today’s tech startups. At one panel, OVHcloud CEO Benjamin Revcolevschi described it as grounded in openness, reversibility, and freedom from lock-in.
“Canada and France are shaping this “third way,’ Gilbert declared, “one where we take control of our digital future.”
Cartesian Theatre Corp., declared he’d grown frustrated with US hosting infrastructure for his AI-powered universal music discovery engine, called Helios.
“There’s an increasing lack of confidence in data sovereignty in American cloud providers,” Warner declared. “The people at OVHcloud take a direct interest in my venture. Their curiosity is sincere.”
For many in the Canadian delegation, the week was less about visibility and more about testing assumptions, forming partnerships, and defining their position and path forward. For Guez, the tone pointed to a quiet optimism about how Canadian tech is being received abroad.
“Canada can stand on its own and it has many interesting markets worth reaching, and coming out of VivaTech, it feels like Europe is ready for it,” she declared.
PRESENTED BY
OVHcloud’s Startup Program starts by offering $14,000 CAD in free credits to early-stage companies, along with one-on-one engineering support to support founders build cloud environments that can scale and adapt. As startups grow, that support can increase step by step, up to $140,000 CAD for more advanced scaleups.
Future-proof your cloud strategy and apply to the OVHcloud Startup Program today.
All photos provided by OVHcloud.
Leave a Reply