France took over the G7 this week with Emmanuel Macron pressing artificial intelligence to the front of the agenda and, with it, a good deal of his own standing. The summit runs from 15 to 17 June, and the pitch is straightforward: position France as Europe’s AI powerhouse, running on the country’s plentiful nuclear electricity.
The catch, as Bloomberg framed it, is that much of what would make the case rests on money and infrastructure Macron does not himself command.
The headline number arrived ahead of the summit. SoftBank committed to develop and operate 5GW of AI data-centre capacity in France, an investment of up to €75bn, with a first phase of roughly €45bn delivering 3.1GW in the Hauts-de-France region.
It was the centrepiece of the Choose France summit, where companies pledged some €93bn across 71 projects, with the government putting the job figure above 15,600.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!SoftBank is not alone. Brookfield, the Canadian asset manager, is adding to its French data-centre spending, and Gulf money has been circling the same sector. Macron’s line, that the projects would make France “by far the leading country hosting data centres” and computing capacity in Europe, is the claim the pledges are meant to underwrite.
