Shadow
Verified“French-owned, French-hosted: a rare end-to-end EU stack.”
- Ownership
- Synfonium (75% Klaba / 25% French state)
- Core infra
- OVHcloud (FR)
- Scale
- ~530K customers (2023)
- Revenue
- ~€12.2M (2021)
81 = midpoint of Control 89 & Data 72
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 8 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 4 open questions hold confidence at 80% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
90
Incorporated and operated as a French SAS in Paris; fully within EU/French jurisdiction with no foreign parent above the French Synfonium/Jezby chain.
Why 90? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Shadow's operating entity is SHADOW SAS, a French simplified joint-stock company registered in Paris under SIREN 891 586 299, share capital €23,927,948, at 42 avenue de la Porte de Clichy, 75017 Paris.
Shadow legal notice (shadow.tech) · as of 2026-06-12
France's company registry (Pappers) lists SHADOW (SIREN 891586299) as an SAS whose president is Jezby Ventures, a French holding company controlled by Octave Klaba.
Pappers — Société SHADOW · as of 2026
Blade (Shadow's predecessor) was restructured through the Paris commercial court before its 2021 acquisition, confirming the entity sits squarely within French insolvency/corporate jurisdiction.
TechCrunch · as of 2021-04-30
Control & Ownership
88
Privately held through French group Synfonium — 75% the Klaba brothers, 25% the French state bank Caisse des Dépôts — so both voting control and the economic majority are European; no foreign listing.
Why 88? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Shadow is owned through Synfonium, a Paris-based SAS held 75% by Octave and Miroslaw Klaba (via Jezby Ventures and Deep Code) and 25% by Banque des Territoires (Caisse des Dépôts).
French Wikipedia — Synfonium · as of 2026-06-12
Synfonium was created on 5 June 2023 by Octave Klaba and the Caisse des Dépôts (via Banque des Territoires) to build a European cloud-services champion, grouping Shadow and Qwant.
Shadow blog — Introducing Synfonium · as of 2023
Shadow's immediate corporate president per the French registry is Jezby Ventures, the Klaba-controlled holding, with no non-EU shareholder in the chain.
Pappers — Société SHADOW · as of 2026
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
62
EU-customer compute runs on OVHcloud — French-owned, Euronext-listed, SecNumCloud-certified infrastructure, the gold standard — but Shadow also operates US data centers under US/California law and hosts its marketing site on Google Ireland, which pulls a strong score down.
Why 62? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Shadow's cloud-PC servers run on OVHcloud's data centers; OVHcloud is a French provider, listed on Euronext Paris and ~81% Klaba-family controlled, holding SecNumCloud qualification and stating it opposes non-EU authority requests for EU-hosted data.
Wikipedia — OVHcloud · as of 2025
Shadow's data-center network spans France (Paris, Gravelines, Strasbourg), Germany (Frankfurt), Canada (Montreal) and the USA (Washington DC, Portland); US-located users' data is governed by California/US law.
Wikipedia — Shadow (service) · as of 2026-06-12
Shadow's own legal notice names Google Ireland Limited (Dublin) as the host of its website — EU-located, but a US-owned hyperscaler.
Shadow legal notice (shadow.tech) · as of 2026-06-12
Shadow Drive (its storage product) is marketed as based and operated in Europe.
Shadow about page (shadow.tech) · as of 2026-06-12
Operations & People
88
Headquartered in Paris with ~100-199 employees, French leadership and euro reporting; clearly EU-centered, with only customer-facing operations extending to North America.
Why 88? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
SHADOW SAS is headquartered in Paris and employs roughly 100-199 people per the French registry.
Pappers — Société SHADOW · as of 2023
Parent group Synfonium is led by CEO Boris Lecoeur (formerly head of AWS France), appointed 11 May 2026, replacing Olivier Abecassis; leadership is France-based.
French Wikipedia — Synfonium · as of 2026-05-11
Shadow reported revenue of about €12.2 million (2021 filing), reported in euros.
Pappers — Société SHADOW · as of 2021
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
4 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
What share of Shadow's actual user data and live compute sits in US data centers (Washington DC, Portland) versus EU sites?
Determines how much of the user base is exposed to US/California law and the CLOUD Act despite the French ownership.
- ?
Current (2024-2026) subscriber count, revenue and profitability are not publicly verified.
Limits confidence in the scale stats; figures shown are 2020-2021 vintage.
- ?
Is Shadow's EU-customer infrastructure covered by OVHcloud's SecNumCloud-qualified offering, or only OVHcloud's standard (CLOUD-Act-resistant but not certified) services?
Affects how strong the data-sovereignty claim really is for EU users.
- ?
Whether any operational tooling/SaaS dependencies (the 2023 breach involved a third-party SaaS admin interface) are US-controlled.
Hidden US-jurisdiction exposure in the operations/supply chain even with EU core infra.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
The EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL) certifies cloud service providers, not consumer cloud-PC services like Shadow; the rows below are an analogous mapping for orientation, not a certification.
Strategic
Explicitly built as a French/European sovereign-cloud champion under Synfonium, backed by the French state via Caisse des Dépôts.
Legal & jurisdictional
French SAS, French ownership chain, fully within EU/French jurisdiction with no foreign parent.
Data & AI
EU compute on OVHcloud is strong, but US data centers place US-customer data under US/California law; data-residency controls per region not fully transparent.
Operational
Paris HQ, French leadership and euro reporting; only customer-facing reach extends to North America.
Supply chain
Core infra is French (OVHcloud), but the website runs on Google Ireland and a third-party SaaS admin tool was the 2023 breach vector.
Technological
Service streams Windows (Microsoft) desktops; the cloud-PC product inherently depends on US-origin OS/software, though hosting is European.
Security & compliance
Hosts on SecNumCloud-qualified OVHcloud and is GDPR-bound, but suffered a ~530K-customer data breach in 2023 via social engineering.
Environmental sustainability
No Shadow-specific environmental disclosures found; OVHcloud reports water-cooling efficiency but that is the provider, not Shadow.
EU alternatives
Shadow is itself a strong EU-sovereign cloud-PC option; the main non-EU peers (a US-customer data footprint) are the only caveat.
The French, Euronext-listed, SecNumCloud-certified provider that already powers Shadow — for raw IaaS/DaaS this is the underlying EU-sovereign layer.
French cloud (Iliad group) offering compute and GPU instances; an EU-sovereign alternative for cloud infrastructure, though not a turnkey consumer cloud-PC.
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).
Report Incorrect Data
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Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology