France unveils 109-billion-euro AI investment as Europe looks to keep up with U.S.
France’s artificial intelligence sector will receive 109 billion euros ($112.6 billion) of private investment in the “coming years,” President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday ahead of the country’s global AI summit.
Speaking with French broadcaster TF1, Macron described the multibillion-euro pledge as “the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate,” referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s massive $500 billion private AI investment project.
The U.S. joint venture, dubbed Stargate, will see OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank spend up to $500 billion on AI infrastructure in America over the next four years.
A few days before France’s AI Action Summit, which kicked off on Monday, the UAE said it would invest between 30 billion euros and 50 billion euros in the construction of a one-gigawatt AI data center in France as part of a campus focused on the technology’s development.
Iliad committed to spending 3 billion euros on AI infrastructure, while Paris-based AI firm Mistral announced plans to invest billions to build its own data center in France.
Source: CNBC