With its new subsidiary, Exaion, EDF is launching an eco-responsible digital offering specialising in blockchain projects

Digital technology is a very energy-hungry sector: data centres could represent up to 13% of the world’s demand for electricity in 2030^[1]. With Exaion, EDF hopes to become the eco-responsible benchmark in the Cloud computing world, cutting its carbon footprint to a minimum. Exaion was founded by two EDF employee-intrapreneurs who have enjoyed support from EDF Pulse Croissance, the Group’s corporate venture and business incubator. Exaion’s aim is to make high performance computing more accessible for everyone.

Exaion's solutions are aimed at businesses of any size that need considerable processing capacity for their digital projects. The subsidiary offers three kinds of service:

• Cloud computing for supercomputers
  Exaion offers the benefits of its processing capacity to its customers, allowing them to resolve large numbers of equations simultaneously.
• Blockchain As a Service
  Exaion provides a blockchain platform to speed up the roll-out of its customers' projects securely.
  At the end of 2020, Exaion will be offering a secure vault service for crypt-asset portfolios.
• Data centre hosting in containers
  For the purposes of high levels of capacity, Exaion hosts data centres in containers under optimum conditions in terms of security and the quality of electricity and telecomm networks (1MW/unit).

All of Exaion's assets will be based in France. Customers' data will be hosted in EDF's data centres, with the highest standards in terms of security and resilience.

With Exaion, the Group is keen to help reduce the digital technology sector's impact on the environment by facilitating the energy transition for its stakeholders. The subsidiary offers ISO 50001 certified infrastructures and plans its activity to optimize energy consumption, thereby reducing its carbon footprint.

Alexandre Perra, Group Senior Executive Vice President in charge of Innovation, Corporate Responsibility and Strategy, explained: “Launched by incredibly committed employee-intrapreneurs, Exaion is the perfect illustration of EDF's mission of offering our clients the means to ensure growth while respecting the planet. Exaion supports the development of a digital economy without compromising on security or environmental impact. This subsidiary is also a new player in France and Europe on a booming worldwide market.”

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_{[1] The spatial and energy impact of data centres on the territories, ADEME report published in 2019}