Macron announces a $11.2 billion AI investment package, France’s response to Stargate
French President Emmanuel Macron announced a total of 100 billion euros of private investment in the AI ecosystem (approximately $112 billion at current exchange rates) on Sunday evening. Paris hosts this week Artificial Intelligence Action Summit – The third international summit Bletchley Park In the UK, and Seoul,South Korea.
“Tonight, Europe will speed up, France will speed up, and for us in France, we will be announcing a 100 billion euro investment in artificial intelligence over the next few years at our summit tomorrow. ” Macron said in a television interview about France 2 and India’s first post.
“What is that? This is exactly the same for France, the US announced on Stargate ($500 billion), which is the same ratio.” With 68 million residents, France is 50% more than the US. I have twice as few people
On Sunday, TechCrunch began counting all investment pledges from foreigners and local players that have been rolling over the past few days. There are 3-50 billion euros United Arab Emirates (and MGX) comes out of 20 billion euros Brookfield, a Canadian investment companyIt comes from 10 billion euros bpifrance Three billion euros came from French telecom company Iliad, totaling 83 billion euros ($85 billion).
So some companies have not yet announced plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the program. Most investments go to data centers focused on new AI. So comparison with Stargate.
It also shed light on French AI startups such as Mistral, Wandercraft and Owkin. This has moved its headquarters to the US, and even states that Europe is still competitive when it comes to artificial intelligence startups, representing an opportunity for Deepseek to catch up. .
“There was a race to scale up. Everyone thought you had to be bigger and stronger than usual. What did Deepseek do with the open model? They’re all accessible from the latest Openai models. “We’ve adopted innovations and adapted them to our own models using a more modest approach,” he said. “Everyone continues this, and that’s why you have to be in this race.”
Mistral’s own data center project
Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, has also announced plans to invest billions in AI clusters. The Paris-based company is probably the only European company working on foundation models that can compete with models like Meta, Open, Humanity, Deepshek, Alibaba.
“We’re going to do a bit and invest billions of euros in the cluster, which will be set up in the Essonne, allowing us to train a more efficient system in just a few months,” Mensch said on French TV TF1. I did. .
These announcements are Stargate Projectbuilt multiple data centers for AI in the US with a $500 billion investment program led by Openai and SoftBank.
As a reminder, the majority of France’s power generation comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it needs to be. High-tech companies are considering new locations for power-rich data centers, so ideally they’ll have carbon-free power, but France has emerged as the ideal location for Europe with these new projects. It’s there.
“In France, we have an extraordinary lead. We produce the world’s most decarbonized, controllable and safer electricity. We have the safest and most stable grid. And we have this We export low-carbon electricity,” Macron said.
He said France exported 90th of electricity to its neighboring countries in 2024. Currently, France plans to use its headroom to attract foreign investment.