French state formally bids €410M for Atos' slimmed-down HPC assets

Stumbling Euro tech giant Atos looks set to finally sell its Advanced Computing assets to the French state. The IT services megacorp, currently undergoing a complex restructuring process, said it has received a confirmatory offer from the French government to acquire the Advanced Computing business of its Eviden subsidiary, …

[captain veg]

Marc Hardwick

"Significantly, Atos has carved out its Vision AI activities from the original deal scope, retaining these higher-margin operations within Eviden. Management noted that Vision AI contributes over one-third of its operating margin, suggesting the strategic decision to preserve value-accretive assets while divesting more capital-intensive High-Performance Computing (HPC) and quantum computing operations,"

Translation: they kept the good bits and offloaded the rest.

"material to Atos's financial profile,"

Translation: affect profits.

"The transaction should provide crucial liquidity for Atos's ongoing transformation. The French State's involvement also underscores the strategic importance of maintaining domestic HPC capabilities, while Atos retains options in the faster-growing AI segments,"

Translation: Atos needs the money and the government needs the computers.

Is there some place where people are taught to speak like this?

-A.

[Like a badger]

Re: Marc Hardwick

If they're genuinely making a profit on AI, then they must be the only people who are (other than management consultancies selling their own AI "expertise" to gormless corporates).

I would imagine two options:

1) They're making no money from Vision AI, but need to justify retaining it because they recognise that those two magic letters A and I are vitally important tools to part gullible investors from their money

2) They are making money from Vision AI and that is why they want to keep it, but then I'd guess there's f-all AI or ML involved at all. Perhaps some fancy algos, but nothing more.

[JessicaRabbit]

Re: Marc Hardwick

I would put my money on option one but computer vision ML is a lot older than the current LLM/generative shit fuelling the current AI hype train.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Marc Hardwick

I'd suggest the French state got the good bits if AtoS kept the AI and sold off their HPC and Quantum bits (and yeah, I think quantum has a future)

The wind seems to be changing on AI and I'm hearing more and more industry views that it's BS, suspect AtoS might be left holding a burst ball pretty soon.