Qwant
Verified“French-owned to the core, Microsoft-fed at the index.”
- Owner
- Synfonium (FR)
- Users
- ~6M
- EU Parliament
- Default since Jun 2026
- Search index
- Bing + Staan
72 = midpoint of Control 88 & Data 56
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 13 sourced facts across 9 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 3 open questions hold confidence at 82% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
88
Incorporated and operated as a French SAS in Paris; fully within reach of French and EU law, with no foreign parent diluting jurisdiction.
Why 88? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Qwant is a French Société par Actions Simplifiée registered in Paris with SIREN 532867256.
Annuaire des Entreprises (data.gouv.fr) · as of 2026
Qwant's registered office is 42 Avenue de la Porte de Clichy, 75017 Paris, and it acts as GDPR data controller.
Qwant Privacy Policy · as of 2026
Qwant is wholly owned within a French group (Synfonium), so no non-EU parent shields it from EU enforcement.
Wikipedia (Qwant) · as of 2026
Control & Ownership
88
Both voting and economic control are French: Klaba family investment funds hold 75% of parent Synfonium and France's public Caisse des Dépôts holds 25%; not publicly listed abroad.
Why 88? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Qwant is owned by Synfonium, whose capital is 75% Klaba brothers' funds (Jezby Ventures, Deep Code) and 25% Caisse des Dépôts.
Next.ink · as of 2023
Caisse des Dépôts (via Banque des Territoires), the French state public financial institution, is a 25% shareholder of Synfonium.
Banque des Territoires (Caisse des Dépôts) · as of 2023
Synfonium acquired 100% of Qwant, completed July 2023 for about EUR 14 million.
Wikipedia (Qwant) · as of 2023
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
38
Search results still lean on Microsoft's Bing index (a US service with CLOUD Act exposure) and query data is transferred to Microsoft; the EU-built Staan index reduces but has not yet replaced this, and no clear EU data-residency is published.
Why 38? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Qwant's privacy policy states pseudonymized query data (keywords, browser info, first three bytes of IP) is transferred to Microsoft, which provides search results and ads.
Qwant Privacy Policy · as of 2026
Qwant has historically depended on Bing's index; a May 2024 Microsoft outage took Bing-reliant services down, exposing the dependency.
Datacenter Dynamics · as of 2024-05-23
Qwant and Ecosia launched their own European search index, Staan, via joint venture European Search Perspective, serving queries in France from August 2025 to reduce Bing reliance.
TechCrunch · as of 2025-08-06
Qwant's privacy policy does not specify a hosting provider or commit to EU-only data residency.
Qwant Privacy Policy · as of 2026
Operations & People
82
HQ in Paris, French leadership (Klaba), a primarily French workforce around 75-100 staff, and euro reporting — operationally EU-centered.
Why 82? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Qwant is headquartered and operated from Paris, France.
Qwant Privacy Policy · as of 2026
Qwant was categorized as a French mid-sized enterprise with roughly 50-99 employees; a 2024 restructuring cut about 25 of ~100 roles.
Société.com (Qwant 532867256) · as of 2024
Qwant reported revenue of about EUR 11.9M and a EUR 9.1M loss in 2022, reflecting French financial reporting in euros.
Developpez.com · as of 2022
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
3 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
Where, physically and on whose infrastructure, is Qwant's own user/log data hosted (e.g. OVHcloud SecNumCloud vs a hyperscaler)?
Directly determines the infrastructure score; the privacy policy names no hosting provider or EU-residency commitment.
- ?
What share of Qwant's live results now comes from the European Staan index versus Microsoft Bing?
The higher the Staan share, the more its real infrastructure sovereignty improves beyond today's score.
- ?
What is Qwant's current (post-restructuring) revenue, headcount and runway under Synfonium?
Affects operations confidence and the company's ability to fund independence from Bing.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
The EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL) targets cloud service providers, not search engines; this is an analogous mapping for context, not a certification Qwant holds.
Strategic
French-owned with French state (Caisse des Dépôts) backing and EU Parliament adoption as a sovereignty symbol.
Legal & jurisdictional
French SAS in Paris, fully under EU/French law with no foreign parent.
Data & AI
Query data transferred to Microsoft for Bing results; own Staan index only partly live, no published EU data-residency.
Operational
HQ, leadership and workforce in France; euro reporting.
Supply chain
Core search results historically depend on Microsoft's Bing index, a US supplier.
Technological
Building an independent European index (Staan/EUSP with Ecosia) but transition is incomplete.
Security & compliance
GDPR controller with privacy-first positioning, but CNIL has flagged undisclosed advertising-purpose data transfers to Microsoft.
Environmental sustainability
No verified, primary-source data on Qwant's energy use or data-center footprint was found.
EU alternatives
Itself a strong EU-owned option; main caveat is residual reliance on Microsoft's Bing index until Staan fully replaces it.
German non-profit-owned engine and Qwant's Staan index partner; also historically Bing-backed but moving to the shared EU index.
Dutch privacy search engine; EU-based but proxies Google results and has had US (System1) investment ties.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
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Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology