By Nate Nelson / Dark Reading

Aerospace giant Airbus and French IT services company Atos are opening negotiations for a potential sale of Atos’ Big Data and Security (BDS) business.

Following a stock-boosting Dec. 15 leak to Reuters, in a Jan. 3 market update, Atos revealed that it had, in fact, received two letters of interest in BDS, with Airbus’ encompassing the entire business at a valuation between €1.5 and 1.8 billion (around US$1.65 to US$2 billion). The offer is nonbinding, and the talks are preliminary.

Any future deal will be long in the making. Airbus has been eyeing Atos’ cybersecurity arm since at least March 2022, having previously made an offer for a 29.9 per cent stake in Atos parent division Evidian before abandoning the plan. At the time, Atos wrote that “combining Airbus’ capabilities with Evidian’s global leading position in managed security services and supercomputing would create a unique European actor in cybersecurity solutions and in the digitalization of the defense sector, public safety and critical national infrastructure.”

An Airbus spokesperson confirmed that the company has made moves to acquire Atos’s BDS business via a “non-binding proposal.”

“Discussions are at an early stage and remain subject to due diligence. There can be no certainty that they will result in any agreement or transaction,” the spokesperson said in a statement provided to Dark Reading. “The acquisition of BDS could significantly accelerate the digital transformation of Airbus, enhance the Company’s defense and security portfolio with strong capabilities in cyber, advanced computing and artificial intelligence, and support Airbus’ decarbonization roadmap.”