France and Germany threw their weight on Thursday behind plans to create a cloud computing ecosystem that seeks to reduce Europe’s dependence on Silicon Valley giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

German economy minister Peter Altmaier, speaking in Berlin, described Gaia-X as a “moonshot” that would help reassert Europe’s technological sovereignty, and invited other countries and companies to join.

In an initial step, 22 French and German companies will set up a non-profit foundation to run Gaia-X, which is not conceived as a direct rival to the “hyperscale” US cloud providers but would instead referee a common set of European a European-based alternative is possible only if we play collectively,” said Michel Paulin, CEO of independent French cloud service provider OVHcloud.

That is already far too late, according to analysts at Gartner, who forecast that the global market for public cloud services will grow by 17% to US$228-billion this year.

“The leading cloud providers have already moved quickly to build up this market,” said Gartner analyst Rene Buest.