Late Sunday, local time, French president Emmanuel Macron announced a total of 109 billion euros in private investments in the IA ecosystem – or about $ 112 billion at current exchange rates. Paris welcomes the summit of the action of artificial intelligence this week – the third international summit focused on the AI after events before Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, and in Seoul, in South Korea.
“I can tell you this evening, Europe will accelerate, France will accelerate,” said Macron in a television interview on France 2 and the first article in India, creating the 109 billion investments in the Artificial intelligence he says would be deployed “in the coming years”.
He added that the money pot represents “exactly the equivalent of France of what the United States announced with Stargate – $ 500 billion – it’s the same ratio.” (With 68 million inhabitants, France has 5x fewer people than the United States)
Techcrunch has started to count all the investment commitments of foreign and local players who have rolled in recent days. With 30 billion euros to 50 billion euros from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), 20 billion euros from the Canadian investment company Brookfield, 10 billion euros from Bpifrance and 3 billion euros from the French telecommunications company Iliad, we reached a total of 83 billion euros. ($ 85 billion) on Sunday.
Some companies have not yet announced their plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the program.
Most investments will go to the new AI -focused data centers. Therefore, the comparison with Stargate.
Macron also discussed French AI startups that have moved their headquarters in the United States, such as Mistral, Owkin and Wandercraft. He said he thought that Europe is still competitive with regard to artificial intelligence startups – even suggesting that Deepseek represents an opportunity to catch up.
“There was a race to develop. Everyone thought you should always be bigger and stronger. What does Deepseek do with his open models? They took all the accessible innovations from the latest Openai model and adapted them to their own model, using a more frugal approach, “he said. “Everyone will continue to do so. And that’s why you have to be in this race.
Mistral data center project
Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, also announced its intention to invest billions in an AI cluster. The company based in Paris is undoubtedly the only European company working on foundation models which can compete with models like Alibaba, Anthropic, Deepseek, Meta, Openai and others.
“We are going to do our song and invest several billion euros in a cluster, which will be set up in Essonne, so that we can train even more effective systems in a few months,” said Mensch on French TV TF1.
The announcement could be considered another reaction to the Stargate project, the $ 500 billion investment program led by Openai and SoftBank, to build several data centers for AI in the United States.
As a reminder, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it uses.
While technological companies are considering new locations for power centers eager for power – ideally propelled by carbon -free electricity – France could present itself as an ideal location in Europe for these projects.
“In France, we have an extraordinary lead. We produce some of the most decarbonized, controllable and secure electricity in the world, “said Macron, adding:” We have the safest and most stable grid. And we export this electricity with a low carbon content. »»
According to the French president, the country has exported 90TWh of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France now plans to use this margin to attract foreign investments.
