ESA picks OVHcloud and CGI to build sovereign Digital EO data system

OVHcloud and CGI France Défense et Spatial announced on 28 September 2026 a 30-month, multi-million-euro contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to build "Digital EO", the agency's Earth observation information system. ESA has not disclosed the value.

The system is meant to federate data, services and processing across national and European infrastructure, with storage, computing and AI resources. It also supports development and governance of algorithms and applications. ESA expects more than 500 petabytes of Earth observation data by 2035.

OVHcloud supplies compute, storage, network and managed cloud services, deployed first in Italy, France and Germany, with support operated from Poland. CGI acts as architect and integrator and will support users and developers. Digital EO is intended to back programmes such as Copernicus and DestinE.

Why it matters: A federated, sovereign European platform for petabyte-scale EO data may shape how Copernicus and DestinE data are stored, processed and accessed. African users of those datasets could be affected by future access and platform arrangements.