Big Tech Before Parliament: France Opens Inquiry Into Its Digital Dependency

On Tuesday, March 10, 2026, the French National Assembly opened a parliamentary inquiry into France's digital sovereignty. Led by Modem deputy Philippe Latombe — rapporteur and a key figure in digital policy at the Palais Bourbon — it plans two months of hearings with Big Tech representatives, AI researchers, and public bodies including CNIL and ANSSI. The inquiry comes at a moment of maximum tension: 24 hours after AMI Labs' historic €890M raise and two weeks after the Trump administration's ban on Anthropic.

Why 2026 Is the Year of Truth for French Digital Sovereignty

Warning signs have accumulated in just a few weeks. On February 27, Washington demonstrated that a president could ban an AI provider overnight from the entire federal apparatus — and France, which uses Anthropic's Claude in several of its government agencies, had zero leverage to influence that decision. The same month, cloud dependency figures landed: 93% of public cloud used in France is hosted by AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

On the AI side, the picture is similar. All dominant language models are American (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) or Chinese (DeepSeek). The last Senate committee on the subject dates back to 2019 — an era when sovereign cloud was a technical debate, not a strategic emergency. In 2026, lawmakers consider the situation "critical."

But the French alternative exists. Mistral AI is targeting €1 billion in revenue, AMI Labs just raised €890M with Nvidia and Toyota, and the National AI Strategy Phase 3 is mobilizing €400M across nine research clusters. The question is no longer whether France has champions — but whether it can scale them before lock-in becomes irreversible.

Two Months to Grill Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple: What Will They Be Asked?

The committee plans to summon the French representatives of all five tech giants, along with public bodies (CNIL, ANSSI, Directorate General for Enterprise) and AI researchers. Expected questions cover very concrete points:

• Data localization: where are the data of French government agencies, hospitals, and local authorities actually hosted?
• Contract clauses: do the conditions imposed on public clients allow data repatriation in case of a geopolitical crisis?
• Pricing and lock-in: do pricing models encourage technological captivity (exit costs, proprietary formats)?
• GDPR compliance: beyond declarations, what's the reality of data transfers to the United States post-Data Privacy Framework?

Philippe Latombe, who has already led several digital policy reports in the Assembly, has two months to produce a report with legislative recommendations. The first hearings are expected mid-March, with the final report due end of May 2026.

93% of French Cloud Hosted by Americans: The Hard Numbers of Dependency

The figure is brutal: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud together capture virtually the entire public cloud market in France. Central government agencies, public hospitals, universities, and thousands of local authorities depend on these infrastructures for their most sensitive data — medical records, tax data, police files.

For comparison, Germany shows comparable dependency but is investing heavily in Gaia-X and dedicated sovereign solutions for the public sector. France has OVHcloud — the historic European cloud player — but with roughly 7% market share, the power balance remains skewed.

The €4B Invested by Big Tech in France: Gift or Trojan Horse?

The paradox of the period: American giants have never invested so much in France. Microsoft announced €4.2 billion for data centers and AI training, Google €1 billion, Amazon €1.2 billion. These investments create jobs, train engineers, and boost the country's attractiveness.

But they also reinforce lock-in. Every data center built by an American hyperscaler on French soil becomes an additional anchor point: customers migrate to the giant's local infrastructure, developers train on its tools, government agencies sign multi-year contracts. Today's generosity manufactures tomorrow's dependency — or constitutes a legitimate investment in a growing market. It's precisely this ambiguity that the committee will need to resolve.

AMI Labs, Mistral, OVHcloud: The French Response Exists, but Is It Enough?

The French AI and cloud ecosystem has never been more dynamic. Mistral AI, with €300M ARR and a sovereign offering deployed to 10,000 public agents, embodies French ambition. AMI Labs, founded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, promises to go beyond LLMs with world models. OVHcloud participates in the European EURO-3C consortium (€75M, with Orange, Deutsche Telekom, and IONOS). Bpifrance's AI Pioneers program injects €10M into emerging startups.

But honesty demands nuance. Mistral AI uses Microsoft Azure for part of its infrastructure. AMI Labs has no commercial product yet. OVHcloud, despite its sovereign positioning, represents only 7% of the market. The National AI Strategy Phase 3 mobilizes €400M — when hyperscalers invest ten times more on French territory alone.

What recommendations will the Latombe committee produce by end of May? Several possibilities are already circulating in the halls of the Palais Bourbon: mandatory sovereign cloud for sensitive government data, public tenders reserved for SecNumCloud-certified European providers, or even a tax on data transfers outside the European Union. Ambitious measures — but ones that will face intense lobbying from American giants, who are themselves creating thousands of jobs on French soil.

Do you think France can realistically reduce its dependency on Big Tech without slowing down its own digital ecosystem?