French cloud computing company OVH plans to triple investment in the coming years to take on U.S. Internet giants Amazon and Alphabet’s Google, Reuters reported.
OVH founder Octave Klaba said the privately-held company will invest between 4-7 billion euros or $4.6-$8.1 billion over its next five-year plan starting in 2021.
This compares with its current 1.5 billion-euro investment plan running until 2020.
The company, based in the northern city of Roubaix near Belgium, is running 27 data centers in 19 countries worldwide, including the United States, and offers storage and web hosting services to companies and individual customers.
It portrays itself as a transparent and secure alternative to Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which dominate cloud computing. The sector is currently thriving on a greater need for IT infrastructure to drive new digital businesses, and now represents a major part of Amazon’s profits.
OVH does not disclose detailed financial information but says it has annual sales of about 500 million euros and positive earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
It says it is growing at a rate of 20 percent a year and that future investments will aim at exploring possible expansions in other countries, including Russia and China.
The group is backed by U.S. investment firms KKR and TowerBrook Capital Partners, which bought a minority stake in OVH for 250 million euros in 2016.
Klaba hired Michel Paulin, a former top executive at France’s number two telecoms operator SFR, to become chief executive and steer the company to its next development stage.
