France Taps Nuclear Power in Race for AI Supremacy #FrenchFinance

To finance the first tranche of construction, FluidStack said it plans to deploy its own cash and secure loans for 10 billion euros, or $10.3 billion. It said talks are continuing with some of the world’s largest AI developers about using the new facility, which could house around 120,000 of Nvidia’s AI chips in its first phase and some 500,000 by 2028 if the site is fully built out. The company said it could further expand to a 10 gigawatt facility, 10 times larger, by 2030.

Much of the financing is necessary to purchase the chips, which have been in short supply in recent years amid the AI boom. AI-computing companies such as CoreWeave have pioneered new financing vehicles secured by Nvidia’s chips and contracts with AI developers to raise billions of dollars for new data centers, something FluidStack said it plans to do as well.

FluidStack said it is in regular contact with Nvidia about the project and has no worries about being able to finance or get access to the chips. “Nvidia has told me that they will send those chips when we need them,” César Maklary, the company’s co-founder and president, said in an interview. Nvidia declined to comment on the deal.

The AI project furthers a longtime push from Macron, who has sought to expand France’s AI computing power. Last year, he told a closed-door roundtable of executives visiting to discuss investments in France that “low carbon and competitive electricity” is “one of our competitive advantages” for AI.

With a fleet of 57 reactors across 18 plants, France currently produces more than two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear power. France last year produced about a fifth more electricity than it consumed, exporting the rest.

If completed as envisioned, the FluidStack project could tip the balance of AI development toward France and Europe. Some European companies, including France’s Mistral AI, are part of AI’s vanguard, and the continent houses AI labs run by American tech giants that contribute to AI research. But Europe has largely been on the sidelines as big American companies—OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Nvidia among them—led the AI boom.

The FluidStack project is one of a number of computing announcements around the Paris AI summit. Brookfield said Monday it is earmarking 20 billion euros for AI infrastructure projects in France, including data centers it hopes will hit 1.5 gigawatts of capacity by the end of the decade.

On Thursday, the United Arab Emirates and France agreed to begin investments with the aim of eventually creating an AI campus in France that would also use a gigawatt of electricity, something French officials said would cost tens of billions of dollars.

“Power is the number one consideration for getting access to AI and bringing our systems online,” said Josh Parker, Nvidia’s senior director of corporate sustainability, in an interview on the sidelines of the Paris summit. “It’s probably going to play the primary role for siting decisions for the foreseeable future.”

Write to Sam Schechner at [email protected] and Asa Fitch at [email protected]