Synfonium, the French holding company which wants to build 'a European sovereign technological ensemble', has a new boss.

A new leader will soon be at the helm of Synfonium, the structure grouping Shadow, the French specialist in cloud PCs, and Qwant, the French search engine. Boris Lecoeur will take the helm of the « French industrial group dedicated to building an European sovereign technological ecosystem at the crossroads of research, data and computing » on the upcoming 11 May, announced the organization in a statement released this Wednesday, April 29th.

With « over twenty years of experience in the software and technology sector » according to his LinkedIn page, Boris Lecoeur has led the French branch of the American cloud giant Amazon (AWS) for nine years. He then took the lead of the French subsidiary of Cloudflare, this American company specialized in web site security and performance. This pillar of the global Web had experienced, in November 2025, a failure that affected numerous websites worldwide.

The goal: « building sovereign services to serve European artificial intelligence »

The Frenchman has previously held « various leadership positions at EMC, Documentum and Adobe Systems ». All these experiences have given him « in-depth knowledge of critical infrastructures and digital sovereignty challenges, as well as recognized expertise in structuring B2B ecosystems and supporting fast-growing tech activities », write the authors of the statement. He replaces Olivier Abecassis, the current CEO of Qwant.

Originally, Synfonium, created in June 2023, had an objective: to group several online services under one banner to offer a unified service portfolio capable of competing with the American giants in the sector. It is now about « building sovereign services for European artificial intelligence », details the statement. « The arrival of Boris Lecoeur within Synfonium marks a new step in the group's trajectory and that of its two brands, Qwant and Shadow », estimates the holding.