Apple is reportedly developing an enterprise server built on its own chips

Apple is developing an enterprise server built on its own M8 Ultra chips and has discussed using Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion to connect them, aiming at AI developers, companies and governments from around 2029, The Information reported. The European Commission proposed its Cloud and AI Development Act in June, grading public cloud contracts by how far a provider sits outside third-country control.

Apple is working on an enterprise server built on its own chips and has discussed using Nvidia’s networking equipment, The Information reported. It would sell the machine to AI developers, companies and governments.

Two versions are described, one carrying two of Apple’s forthcoming M8 Ultra chips and a larger one carrying four. Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion would connect them, the interconnect it already licenses to Qualcomm, Arm, Fujitsu, Marvell and others.

Nothing would reach the market before 2029. The effort could be cancelled, or proceed without Nvidia’s technology at all. Shares in both companies barely moved on the report.

Apple already builds servers, for itself. Private Cloud Compute ran only on Apple silicon until June, when the company extended it to Google Cloud running on Nvidia GPUs and Intel processors.

It has not sold one since 2011, when the Xserve was discontinued after a run of nearly nine years.

Governments is the interesting word.

The Commission’s June proposal for a Cloud and AI Development Act would grade public contracts by tiers of sovereignty assurance. The highest tier, meant for defence and national security, requires a European cybersecurity certificate and effective control over every software component. No third country may control a provider’s design, development or maintenance.

Europe has already shown what it accepts in practice, and it is less absolute than that sounds.

A six-year, EUR 180M sovereign cloud framework went to four groups in April. One was a Proximus-led consortium including a Thales and Google venture, alongside Mistral AI. American infrastructure qualified.

Non-European technologies, operated within a strict and appropriate framework, can meet the minimum level of sovereignty required, the Commission said at the time. Bidders were judged against eight objectives, from legal exposure to supply chain transparency.

The distinction is between sovereign operation and sovereign technology. A machine a government owns and runs in its own building is an easier argument to make than a service somebody else runs.

The Act covers cloud services rather than hardware, so a server sale would sit outside it altogether. The procurement instinct behind it would not, and buyers write their own conditions.

Europe is short of the thing no regulation conjures. You cannot regulate your way to sovereignty, as Dan Toma argued here last month, when the silicon is American either way.