Macron unveils plans for €109bn of AI investment in France #FrenchFinance

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced €109bn worth of investments in artificial intelligence in France over the coming years, as Europe seeks a greater foothold in the fast-growing industry dominated by the US and China.

Macron touted the new funding at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Monday, which featured discussions between world leaders such as US vice-president JD Vance and executives such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

It comes after US President Donald Trump last month hailed a $500bn AI infrastructure project known as Stargate, to be built in America and led by OpenAI and SoftBank.

Big technology groups Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have between them lined up $300bn this year for AI-related capital expenditure.

Meanwhile, Chinese groups such as DeepSeek are making huge strides in developing competitive and low-cost AI models, while Huawei is investing heavily in building chips that can rival those of market leader Nvidia.

Faced with such competition, “Europe and France must accelerate their investments,” Macron told France 2 television on Sunday.

The planned €109bn of AI projects in France are focused on building infrastructure, such as computing clusters and data centres with gigawatts of capacity with the aim of keeping up with the rival vast expansion in the US.

“This is the equivalent for France of what the US announced for Stargate,” Macron said.

The move highlights Macron’s determination that France and Europe not get left behind in the global race to develop and commercialise cutting-edge technology.

The United Arab Emirates said last week that it would invest as much as €50bn on a new campus for data centres. Initial financing will come from Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, a $100bn investment vehicle also involved in Stargate, while a consortium of French companies would join later.

Canadian asset manager Brookfield also announced a €20bn investment to deploy AI infrastructure in France.

France has also pitched low-carbon energy from its nuclear power fleet as a selling point for AI computing power. The government said it would work with a UK start-up called Fluidstack to build a major computing cluster that should be active by 2026.

“Here there is no need to ‘drill baby, drill’, it is just ‘plug baby, plug’,” said Macron, referring to Trump’s mantra to boost fossil fuel production.

France produces more than two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear power, and its fleet of 57 reactors also exports power to neighbours.

Another outcome of the Paris summit will be the creation of a non-profit investment fund called Current AI that aims to further “public interest AI”, such as the creation of privacy-friendly, anonymised healthcare data for AI projects. Some €400mn has been pledged towards a five-year fundraising goal of €2.5bn.

On Monday, venture capital firm General Catalyst told the Financial Times it was leading a wider investment group that planned to spend €150bn over the next five years to deploy AI within companies, invest in European AI start-ups and build up critical infrastructure in the region.

The private equity and venture investors joining the initiative include KKR, Blackstone, EQT, CVC and DST Global. Some of the investors’ specific spending plans are yet to be determined and are contingent on identifying investment opportunities, as well as other factors, such as regulation.

The scheme is also being supported by more than 60 European companies, including German automaker Volkswagen, Swedish music streamer Spotify and Italian-Dutch investment group Exor. These companies are pledging to “accelerate and adopt” AI, but have not committed to specific spending on the technology.

The group will present Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, with new policy recommendations seeking to cut red tape to harmonise and simplify the EU’s AI and data laws.

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director of General Catalyst, said she had corralled figures from European industry to buy into European AI, adding: “We have had a wake-up call and we are now deregulating, we’re activating, we’re getting ready.”

European start-ups have long lagged behind their US and Chinese counterparts as they face an uphill battle due to insufficient funding, access to computing power and a lack of clarity on how to apply regulations.

For Macron, the summit is a chance to show that France can still wield soft power on big global issues such as AI.

He has advocated for Europe to develop its own AI platforms and applications, so as not to rely only on US and Chinese innovations for a technology that will affect so many areas of business, consumers and society.

In particular, he has been a cheerleader of Paris-based AI start-up Mistral, one of the only significant builders of a large language model in Europe, with its chief executive Arthur Mensch expected to be a star of the summit for the French. Mistral also announced that it would spend “several billion” to build a data centre in the Paris region.

Macron and other leaders, such as co-host India’s premier Narendra Modi, have advocated for more “open”, shared AI platforms, such as those built by Mistral and DeepSeek, as opposed to the closed alternatives made by OpenAI and Google.

Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta and a prominent French researcher, said US companies with closed models “have a superiority complex that is misplaced”, adding: “The open world is catching up with them.”

Additional reporting by Ivan Levingston in London and Henry Foy and Barbara Moens in Brussels