Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest 20 billion euros by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (about $ 20.7 billion with current exchange rates), according to a report by La Dimanche tribune confirmed by AFP news agency. Most of the amount will be used for the construction of data centers centered on it.
This announcement is the latest in a series of investment commitments as state leaders and global technology leaders plan to gather for the Paris artificial intelligence action starting Monday.
According to La Tribune Dimanche, about 15 billion euros of Brookfield investment will head to a massive data center in Cambrai in northern France. This data center will have a capacity up to a gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, including building new electricity production skills.
On Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced a campus project, along with a large investment of up to 50 billion euros ($ 52 billion). Once again, most investments will go to a data center with a capacity up to a gigawatt.
There are two reasons why these investment mega projects are happening now. First, on January 21, Openai, Softbank, MGX and other partners discovered the Stargate project, a $ 500 billion investment program to build numerous data centers for the United States.
While it is unclear how much every investor is ready to engage for Stargate, this announcement-combined with Mario Draghi’s latest report on European competition-acting as an awakening call for many policy-making in Europe.
Second, most of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants (about 65%) and renewable resources (about 25%). It also produces more electricity than it should. Technology companies are trying to reduce their carbon trail and find sufficient electricity capacity, so they are increasingly looking for France as an attractive place for their hungry energy centers.
Other commitments from local companies
Separately, BPIPRANCE, France’s Public Investment Bank, announced that it plans to invest up to € 10 billion ($ 10.3 billion) in the ecosystem of France. This is not a database project, as BPIPRANCE mainly wants to support more of its beginnings and become a limited partner in LC Firms specialized in its investments. BPIPRANCE is already a shareholder in myshel, h and pools.
Finally, the Iliad, the Telecom company founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is allocating 3 billion euros to he ($ 3.1 billion) with the help of financial partners, such as infravia. About 2.5 billion euros ($ 2.6 billion) will be used to build new data centers focused on the “hundreds of capacity megawatts”.
Scaleway, a France -based cloud computing company is a branch of the Iliad. So the new computing power is likely to be available through scaleway. Some European companies have already used Scaleway to train their models of him, such as Mistral, H and Photoroom. (Interestingly, Xavier Niel also happens to be an investor in Mistral and H.)
If you add all these announcements, France can receive 83 billion euros ($ 85 billion) in investments associated with it in the coming years, mainly related to databases and infrastructure projects. And there may be more to come to the Action Summit.
