French President Emmanuel Macron announced a private investment of 100.9 billion euros on Sunday night (current exchange rate is about $112 billion). This week, Paris held the AI Action Summit - the third international summit behind Bletchley Park in the UK and Seoul, South Korea.
"I can tell you that tonight, Europe will accelerate, France will accelerate. For us, France, we announced an €100.9 billion investment in artificial intelligence at the summit tomorrow in the next few years."
"What is that? For France, the proportion of Stargate announced by the United States ($500 billion) is exactly the same." France has 68 million residents, five times less than the United States.
On Sunday, TechCrunch began counting all investment commitments that have been in foreign and local players over the past few days. €3 billion to 50 billion from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), €20 billion from the Canadian investment firm Brookfield, €10 billion from Bpifrance, and €3 billion from French telecommunications company ILIAD from Bpifraance. Up to 83 billion euros (85 billion US dollars).
Therefore, some companies have not announced their plans yet. In the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the plan. Most investments will be used in new AI-focused data centers. Therefore, comparison with Stargate.
Macron also sheds light on French AI startups such as Mistral, Wandercraft and Owkin, which has moved its headquarters to the United States, and he believes Europe remains competitive in terms of AI startups.
"There is a competition to scale up. Everyone thinks you always have to be bigger and stronger. What does DeepSeek do to its open model? They have adopted the latest OpenAI model, taking all the accessible innovations. and adapt it into its own model using a more frugal approach,” he said. "Everyone will keep doing that. That's why you have to play this game."
Mistral's co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch also announced plans to invest billions in AI clusters. The Paris-based company is arguably the only European company engaged in basic models and can compete with models from Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepseek, Alibaba and more.
"We will invest billions of euros in a cluster that will be built in Essonne so that we can train more efficient systems in just a few months," Mensch said on French TV TF1.
The announcements could be seen as a reaction to the Stargate project, a $500 billion investment plan led by OpenAI and Softbank to build multiple data centers for AI in the United States.
As a reminder, most of France's electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also generates more electricity than needed. With tech companies looking for new locations for the data centers they crave (ideally capable of being powered by carbon-free electricity), France seems to be the ideal location for Europe for these new projects.
"In France, we have an extraordinary lead. We produce some of the most decarbonized, controlled and secure electricity in the world. We have the safest and most stable grid. We output this low-carbon electricity." Macron said.
According to him, France exported 90 TWH of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France now plans to use the headroom to attract foreign investment.