Hon Hai partners with France's Bull for AI expansion in Europe

Taipei, June 1 (CNA) Taiwan-based manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. announced Monday a strategic partnership with French high-performance computing leader Bull to help expand Europe's artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

Under the agreement, Bull will lead AI systems design and market development, while Hon Hai, known internationally as Foxconn, will provide manufacturing and supply chain support through its facilities in Europe, the two companies said in separate statements.

The partners revealed that component manufacturing and initial testing will be conducted at Foxconn's facility in Pardubice, Czech Republic. Final assembly, system integration, and quality validation will then be carried out at Bull's factory in Angers, France.

According to Bull, the collaboration is aimed at strengthening Europe's domestic AI supply chain and supporting emerging AI factories and cloud service providers seeking locally produced infrastructure.

The French firm disclosed that the project is expected to involve an initial investment of more than 120 million euros (US$139.8 million) in France, aligning with broader European efforts to establish sovereign AI capabilities.

Hon Hai announced the partnership one day before the opening of Computex Taipei 2026, where it plans to showcase a broad portfolio of next-generation AI hardware and software applications.

According to the company, exhibits will highlight its manufacturing and system integration capabilities for Nvidia Corp's cutting-edge Vera Rubin NVL72 platform, alongside a range of AI servers, high-speed interconnecting technologies and modular systems designed to accelerate deployment of next-generation AI factories.

The company will also showcase optical networking technologies, industrial robotics solutions and applications related to healthcare and space-based data centers.

Among the exhibits will be a space data center concept developed with Ramon.Space, as well as AI healthcare applications including its CoDoClaw clinical AI agent platform based on Nvidia's NemoClaw technology.

The announcement comes as AI infrastructure is expected to be a central theme at the 2026 edition of Computex Taipei, which runs from June 2-5 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center and is set to attract major technology companies focused on data centers, AI servers, networking, and robotics.