Octave Klaba
Founder and CEO of OVHcloud / Tech entrepreneur
Entry created on: 28/07/2026
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Short summary
Founder and CEO of OVHcloud / Tech entrepreneur
Role
Founder and CEO of OVHcloud / Tech entrepreneur
Skills and topics
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Entry created on: 28/07/2026
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the Hacker of Possibilities
In a world where the internet was still a wild frontier, a 15-year-old arrived from Poland with a major asset: his ability to understand, repair, and ...hack. That teenager was Octave. Raised in a world where every problem had to find its solution, he quickly turned his ingenuity into a superpower. His goal? To build in Europe a technological force capable of competing with the American giants — yes, including Google and Amazon. Those who cross his path speak of an intense spirit that is impossible to stop. A builder. A pioneer. A game-changer. Starting from nothing? For him, that is not a limit. On the contrary, it is the beginning of the story.
Timeline
Chronological journey
A family story
A family story
Octave Klaba was born in 1975 in Nowa Ruda, Poland, into a family of engineers. He grew up surrounded by circuits and technical drawings, alongside parents who could fix almost anything.
The school of inventiveness
The school of inventiveness
In Poland, in the late 1980s, resources were scarce. Being resourceful was a real strength. No part? You make it. No tool? You find another way to do it. No solution? You create one. It was in this environment that Octave developed his superpower: imagining an answer to any challenge.
New country, new challenge
New country, new challenge
At 15, everything changed: his family moved to France. New country, new language... and for him, a giant playground opened up! Settled near Roubaix, he adapted quickly: with a science baccalaureate in hand, he joined ICAM Lille, an engineering school. His strength? Already bilingual in “computers,” he learned French at top speed!
The ingenious student
The ingenious student
Octave spent his nights tinkering with computers, writing code, and building tools for the internet. He made on his own what he needed: visitor counters, homemade mini-tools, website hosting... Why? Because nothing existed yet... so he created everything!
1999: The OVHcloud Big Bang
1999: The OVHcloud Big Bang
In 1999, still a student, he launched OVH. At first, it was a small association in a student room... but with a giant ambition: to offer web hosting that was faster, more reliable, and above all more European. The result? It took off very quickly. OVH built its own servers, opened a first data center in Roubaix, then set out to conquer Europe and the whole world, becoming OVHcloud!
His job
Octave is not just a cloud expert; he is someone who wants to show that Europe can also create technologies that matter.
His job: helping companies of all sizes and public organizations use the cloud easily while remaining free in their technology choices. He also works to turn AI into practical, useful tools and to prepare for the arrival of quantum technologies.
In concrete terms, he imagines and improves tools used to run websites, apps, games, videos, platforms... in short, everything that lives online. His goal: to make it high-performing, easy to use, and accessible to as many people as possible.
Today, Octave works with OVHcloud's leadership team to define and implement a strategy that enables the Group to establish itself as one of the world's cloud leaders. Together, they lead more than 3,000 people working all over the world!
His daily life is a mix of highly advanced technical challenges, major decision-making, and constant experimentation. Testing, making mistakes, correcting, trying again... That's really how he works. For him, an entrepreneur is not someone who knows everything. It is someone who says: “OK, there’s a problem. We take it apart, look at it from every angle... and eventually we solve it.”
His commitments and values
Octave's story is a blend of effort, humility, and responsibility. The kind of person who moves forward, owns his choices, and never gives up. For him, creating means taking responsibility: toward his teams and his clients. But digital technology is also a struggle: building and innovating locally, not surrendering everything to foreign giants. A conviction rooted in his childhood and in his desire to preserve freedom and independence.
What Octave Klaba shares:
“I built the company without money. Just with desire.”
“An entrepreneur's first reflex is to admit there is a problem. As long as you refuse, you do not move forward.”
“I get up every morning as if the company were going to die that evening.”
Resources
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