Macron unveils $112B AI investment package, France’s answer to US’ Stargate – TechCrunch
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Late Sunday local time, French president Emmanuel Macron announced a total of €109 billion in private investments in the AI ecosystem — or around $112 billion at current exchange rates. Paris is hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit this week — the third international summit focused on AI after earlier events in Bletchley Park in the U.K. and in Seoul, South Korea.“I can tell you this evening, Europe is going to speed up, France is going to speed up,” Macron said in a TV interview on France 2 and India’s First Post, teeing up the €109 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, which he said would be deployed “over the next few years.”He added that the pot of money represents “exactly the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate — $500 billion — it’s the same ratio.” (With 68 million inhabitants, France has 5x fewer people than the U.S.)TechCrunch started counting all the investment pledges from foreign and local players that have been rolling in over the past few days. With €30 billion to €50 billion coming from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), €20 billion coming from Canadian investment firm Brookfield, €10 billion coming from Bpifrance, and €3 billion coming from French telecom company Iliad, we reached a total of up to €83 billion ($85 billion) as of Sunday.A few companies have yet to announce their plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the program. Most of the investments will go toward new AI-focused data centers. Hence, the comparison with Stargate.Macron also discussed French AI startups that have moved their headquarters to the U.S., such as Mistral, Owkin, and Wandercraft. He said he believes Europe is still competitive when it comes to artificial intelligence startups — even suggesting that DeepSeek represents an opportunity to catch up.“There was a race to scale up. Everybody thought you always had to be bigger and stronger. What did DeepSeek do with its open models? They have taken all accessible innovations from the latest OpenAI model and adapted them to their own model, using a more frugal approach,” he said. “Everyone will continue to do this. And that’s why you have to be in this race.”Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, also announced plans to invest billions in an AI cluster. The Paris-based company is arguably the only European company working on foundation models that can compete with models from the likes of Alibaba, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Meta, OpenAI, and others.“We’re 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’ time,” Mensch said on French TV TF1.The announcement could be seen as another reaction to the Stargate Project, the $500 billion investment program led by OpenAI and SoftBank, to build multiple data centers for AI in the United States.As a reminder, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it uses. On Monday, the French government announced that the country plans to pledge one gigawatt of nuclear power to AI training by the end of 2026.As tech companies are looking at new locations for power-hungry data centers — ideally powered by carbon-free electricity — France could present itself as an ideal location in Europe for these projects.“In France, we have an extraordinary lead. We produce some of the most decarbonized, controllable and safe electricity in the world,” said Macron, adding: “We have the safest and most stable grid. And we export this low-carbon electricity.”According to the French president, the country exported 90TWh of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France now plans to use that headroom to attract foreign investments.Read our full coverage of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter! Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.Topics
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