Late Sunday with local time, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a total of € 109 billion in private investment in the ecosystem of him – or about $ 112 billion in current exchange rates. Paris is waiting for the summit of the artificial intelligence action this week – the third international summit focused on him after earlier events in Bleretchley Park in the United Kingdom, and Seoul, South Korea.
“I can tell you this evening, Europe will speed up, France will speed up,” Macron said in a television interview in France 2 and India’s first post, introducing 109 billion euros in investment in the artificial intelligence he he said it will be decided “over the next years”.
He added that the money pot represents “exactly the equivalent to France of what the United States announced with Stargate – $ 500 billion – is the same report.” (With 68 million inhabitants, France has 5x fewer people than SH.BA)
Techcrunch began to count all promises of investment by foreign and domestic players who have been entering the last few days. With 30b to € 50B coming from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), 20b € coming from the Canadian Brookfield Investment Firm, 10b € coming from Bpiprance and 3b € coming from the French company of Telekom Iliad, we achieved a total up to 83b € to 83b € ($ 85b) since Sunday.
Some companies still do not have to announce their plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the program.
Most investments will go to new data centers focused on it. Therefore, comparison with Stargate.
Macron also discussed the French beginnings of the one who have moved their headquarters to the US, such as Mistral, Owkin and Wandercraft. He said he believes Europe is still competitive when it comes to the beginnings of artificial intelligence – even suggesting that Deepseek represents an opportunity to capture.
“There was a race to escalate. Everyone thought you should always be bigger and stronger. Did Deepseek do with its open models? They have received all the innovations accessible from the latest Openai model and adapted them to their model, using a more frugal approach, “he said.” Everyone will continue to do so. And that’s why Why you have to be in this race. “
Mistral’s Data Center project
Arthur Mensch, co -founder and mistral CEO, also announced plans to invest billions in a group of him. Paris -based company is probably the only European company working in Foundation models that can compete with models from Alibaba, Anthropic, Deepseek, Meta, Openai, and others.
“We will do a little and invest a few billion euros in a group, which will be located in Esonne so that we can train even more efficient systems in just a few months,” Mensch told TF1 TV.
The announcement can be seen as another reaction to the Stargate project, the $ 500 billion investment program led by OpenAi and Softbank to build numerous data centers for the United States.
As a memory, most of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it uses.
While technology companies are looking at new locations for hungry databases from electricity-ideally powered by carbon-free electricity could present itself as an ideal place in Europe for these projects.
“In France, we have an extraordinary superiority. We produce some of the most decarbonized, controllable and secure electricity in the world, “Macron said, adding:” We have the safest and most stable network. And we export this low carbon electricity. “
According to the French president, the country exported 90twwh of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France now plans to use that head room to attract foreign investment.
