Qarnot Computing, founded in 2010 and based in Montrouge near Paris, sells computing power from servers installed where their heat is useful. Its QBx "digital boiler" recovers about 95% of server heat as hot water at up to 65 °C for heating networks and swimming pools, in France, Finland and Greece. With the EIC, Qarnot said it aimed at "being the champion of the green cloud providers in Europe" and would "take an industrial turn", according to CORDIS.
The European Innovation Council granted €2,450,000 towards a €3.5 million project from May 2023 to April 2025. The final report describes new server integrations for the boiler, cheaper manufacturing and a rebuilt scheduler handling 700 cores per machine pool. Qarnot's revenue fell from €4.31 million in 2022 to €3.04 million in 2024 while its loss grew to €5.97 million. On 19 May 2026 the Nanterre commercial court opened receivership, and on 8 July it approved a sale plan and converted the case to judicial liquidation, according to the official gazette BODACC. Scaleway, the cloud arm of the iliad group, acquired the business.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Qarnot Computing SAS, SIREN 528 593 817, Montrouge
- Founded
- December 2010
- President
- Paul Benoit
- Staff
- 50 to 99 (2023 register data)
- EIC project
- LoCaCloud, 1 May 2023 to 30 Apr 2025
- Insolvency
- Receivership 19 May 2026; sale plan and liquidation 8 July 2026
- Buyer
- Scaleway (iliad group)
What Happened to Qarnot
Qarnot announced a €35 million round in early 2023, with Banque des Territoires investing for the French state's France 2030 plan, but "this windfall did not allow the company to balance its accounts", Next reported, citing cumulative losses of €9 million in 2023 and 2024. The court set 18 May 2026 as the date its payments stopped. Scaleway announced the purchase on 10 July, describing Qarnot as a specialist in high-performance computing for engineering, simulation and research, with heat recovery deployed in places such as Brescia, Italy.
"EIC will help us scaling, take an industrial turn and reach our high business ambitions."
Qarnot Computing, EIC project objectiveThe Technology: Servers as Boilers
Each QBx holds 12 Open Compute Project servers cooled by liquid, and Qarnot's middleware, Qware, spreads cloud jobs across its scattered sites. The report claims Qarnot cuts carbon footprint by up to 80% compared with a regular European data centre because the electricity is used twice, for computing and heating, and no air conditioning is needed. It also says the team tested several storage and caching configurations, "most of which were unsatisfactory", and was still developing its own data registry.
What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
The engineering work on the boiler and the software went ahead, though the report gives the scheduler at 700 cores per pool against a target of 1,500 "within a year". The business goal, to scale and become the leading green cloud provider in Europe, failed: revenue shrank and the company ended in receivership a year after the project closed. CORDIS still lists the project as signed.
- Boiler hardwareDeliveredNew server integrations.
- Scalable orchestrationPartly700 of 1,500 cores per pool.
- Commercial scale-upFailedRevenue down 29%.
- Independent companyFailedLiquidated, business sold.
The Money
According to Pappers, Qarnot lost €2.01 million in 2022, €3.1 million in 2023 and €5.97 million in 2024, while wage costs rose from €4.25 million to €6.06 million. Its cash fell from €13.2 million at the end of 2022 to €2.16 million at the end of 2024, when it also had €6.26 million of financial debt. Its equity fell from €16.7 million to €9.13 million.
What Cannot Be Checked
Questions for the EIC
Whether the EIC Fund invested, what Scaleway paid, how many staff it kept, what creditors will recover and how much of the grant was paid are not public.
Why Europe Should Care
The technology survives inside a French cloud provider, which keeps it in European hands. But the EIC backed Qarnot to scale as an independent green cloud company, and within a year of the project ending it could not pay its debts.
What the project promised
An industrial scale-up to make Qarnot Europe's champion green cloud provider.
What the record shows
Falling revenue, tripled losses, receivership in May 2026 and a sale to Scaleway before liquidation.
The Verdict
Sold to survive
Qarnot's heat-recovering servers worked well enough for Scaleway to buy them. The company the EIC funded to scale did the opposite, shrinking into receivership and liquidation.
Qarnot's liquidator, Scaleway and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.
