The head of the largest company in Europe pours cold water on EU ambitions on data centers: “It's completely crazy”
Christian Klein, photographed at the annual press conference of the SAP, in January 2025, photo: UWE Anspach / AFP / Profimedia Images
The leader of the most valuable European company after the capitalization on the stock exchange says it is useless for Europe to build data centers to try to compete with American cloud giants, who have already invested on the continent, The Register reports.
Speaking at an investment conference organized by BNP Paribas, the executive director of the SAP, Christian Klein, said that his company has concluded agreements with the French artificial intelligence company Mistral and with the Capgemini business service provider to support customers concerned with data sovereignty in Europe, but does not see the purpose of replicating this effort.
“A year ago we would not have thought about this kind of geopolitical conflicts that we are facing now,” said the head of the German company.
SAP, the largest software developer in Europe, became in March this year and the largest European company, in relation to its total value on the stock exchange. The title had been held from September 2023 by Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of the drugs Wegovy and Ozempic.
Klein also stated that, in terms of data and data storage, SAP offers concerned customers “complete sovereignty from top to bottom”, that is, on all levels of the technological chain.
However, Klein warned of attempts to reply the services of great American cloud providers, who claim to provide data sovereignt in Europe. In recent weeks, Microsoft, Google and, most recently, AWS have sent similar messages on their role as safe shelters for European customers worried about policies and rhetoric from the White House.
SAP chief, warning for Europe
“The only thing I would warn in Europe is the following: the competitiveness of the European car industry or the chemical industry will not be obtained by building 20 different databases in France and trying to compete with the American Cloud giants,” said Christian Klein.
“It's completely crazy, and that means a completely wrong sovereignty,” the SAP chief said.
“We need the best here in Europe to apply, to use smart software that will allow us to produce much better, faster, better cars and manage our supply chains with a much higher efficiency,” he urged.
Klein added that there is huge pressure on energy prices in Europe, so building additional data centers is not a good solution.
Why cause concern the technological “sovereignty” in Europe
Against the background of an increasingly hostile American rhetoric towards European policies and governance rules, European leaders have recently announced an international digital strategy, meant to help the Community block cope with technological changes in a context of global political resettlement.
While the American Cloud giants-AWS, Google and Microsoft-are trying to calm the data sovereignty, some European politicians remain skeptical of the availability of the American administration to comply with the judgments.
SAP is not alone when questioning the wisdom of separation from American companies in the cloud infrastructure.
Experts consult last month by the Tech The Register website said that “in practice, it is almost impossible” for European organizations to reproduce the infrastructure developed in Europe by the big American companies in the field.
