Sovereignty is not a white paper. It is a deployment decision. And deployment decisions require infrastructure that does not yet exist in Europe at the scale and form factor the moment demands.
— Victor CaducVictor Caduc is the co-founder and CEO of Proxima, a European deeptech company building the next generation of sovereign AI infrastructure. Proxima is redefining how AI is deployed in Europe by combining open-source models, sovereign cloud infrastructure, and energy-aware orchestration to deliver AI that is simultaneously high-performance, confidential, and radically more efficient.
The company builds what Caduc calls micro AI factories: compact, immersion-cooled compute units designed to be embedded directly in the communities they serve — returning waste heat as a public resource. French, fluent in French and English, Victor is based in Paris.
With a background in engineering and international operations, Victor previously led the South African subsidiary of a French industrial group, managing complex projects, scaling operations, and driving business in demanding environments. This operational grounding now shapes his approach to AI: pragmatic, execution-focused, and built for real-world impact.
At Proxima, Victor leads strategy, growth, and partnerships with a clear ambition: to make Europe a global leader in trusted, sovereign, and sustainable AI infrastructure. Not by building a European hyperscaler, but by deploying a different kind of infrastructure entirely — distributed rather than centralised, energy-positive rather than energy-consuming, and sovereign by architecture rather than by policy declaration.
Join 200+ leaders in Vienna on May 19, 2026 for a day of insight, inspiration, and meaningful connections at the intersection of human potential and AI.