Macron unveils $112B AI investment package, France’s answer to US’ Stargate
At the end of Sunday local time the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced a total of € 109 billion in private investments in the AI ecosystem – or around $ 112 billion against current exchange rates. This week, Paris is organizing the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit – the third international top focused on AI after previous events in Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, and Seoul, Zuid -Korea.
“I can tell you tonight, Europe is going to accelerate, France is going to accelerate,” said Macron in a TV interview on France 2 and India’s first post, which would be € 109 billion in artificial intelligence on Said “in the coming years” used.
He added that the pot with money represents “exactly the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate – $ 500 billion – it is the same ratio.” (With 68 million inhabitants, France has 5x fewer people than the US)
WAN began to count all investment issues from foreign and local players who are rolling in recent days. With € 30 billion to € 50 billion from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), € 20b from the Canadian investment company Brookfield, € 10b from BPifrance and € 3B from the French telecom company ILIAD, we reached a total of € a maximum of € 83b ($ 85 billion) from Sunday.
Some companies still have to announce their plans. During the interview, Macron and Thales mentioned as other investors in the program.
Most investments go to new AI-oriented data centers. Hence the comparison with Stargate.
Macron also discussed French AI startups that have moved their headquarters to the US, such as Mistral, Owkin and Wandercraft. He said he believes that Europe is still competitive when it comes to startups of artificial intelligence – even suggesting that Deepseek offers a chance to catch up.
“There was a race to scale up. Everyone thought you should always be bigger and stronger. What did Deepseek did with his open models? They have taken all the accessible innovations of the latest OpenAi model and adapted to their own model, with the help of a more economical approach, “he said.” Everyone will continue to do this. And that’s why you have to be in this race. “
Mistral’s data center project
Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, also announced plans to invest billions in an AI cluster. The Paris -based company is perhaps the only European company that works on foundation models that can compete with models of people such as Alibaba, Anthropic, Deepseek, Meta, OpenAI and others.
“We are going to do our bit and invest several billion euros in a cluster, which will be set up in Essonne, so that we can train even more efficient systems in just a few months,” Mensch said on French TV TF1.
The announcement can be seen as a different response to the Stargate project, the investment program of $ 500 billion led by OpenAI and Softbank, to build several data centers for AI in the United States.
In memory, the majority of the electricity production of France comes from nuclear power stations. France also produces more electricity than it used. On Monday, the French government announced That the country intends to promise a gigawatt of nuclear energy to AI training towards the end of 2026.
While technology companies look at new locations for power-hungry data center idealiter driven by carbon-free electricity-zou France can present itself as an ideal location in Europe for these projects.
“In France we have an extraordinary lead. We produce some of the most low -carbon, controllable and safe electricity in the world, “Macron said, adding:” We have the safest and most stable grid. And we export this low -carbon electricity. “
According to the French president, the country exported 90 TWH from electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France is now planning to use that headroom to attract foreign investments.
