French President Emmanuel Macron has announced investments worth 109 billion in France in the coming years in artificial secret services, since Europe is greater foot in the rapidly growing industry, which is dominated by the USA and China.
Macron has advertised the new financing in front of the AI action summit in Paris, which begins on Monday, with discussions between the leaders of the world and the AI executives like Sam Altman von Openaai.
After US President Donald Trump celebrated an AI infrastructure project of USD 500 billion last month Stargatebuilt in America and managed by Openai and Softbank.
BIG Technology Groups Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta this year have $ 300 billion for AI-related capital expenditure of USD 300 billion.
In the meantime, Chinese groups such as Deepseek are making enormous progress in the development of competitive and inexpensive AI models, while Huawei invests heavily in building chips that can compete with those of the market leader Nvidia.
In view of such a competition, “Europe and France have to accelerate their investments,” Macron told France 2 television on Sunday.
For this purpose, France will announce on Monday that companies have agreed to invest EUR 109 billion in AI projects in the country in the coming years.
“This is the equivalent for France of what the USA has announced for Stargate,” said Macron.
The step underlines Macron’s determination that France and Europe are part of the global race to develop and market the most modern technology.
An investment in France comes from the United Arab Emirates that said last week that they will invest up to 50 billion euros on a new campus for data centers.
The first financing will come from Abu Dhabi’s MGX Fund, a 100 billion dollar investment vehicle, which is also involved in Stargate, while a consortium of French companies would later join.
On Sunday, the Canadian asset manager Brookfield also announced an investment of € 20 billion to support the use of the AI infrastructure in France.
Another result of the Parisian summit is the creation of a non-profit investment fund called Current AI, which aims to further develop the so-called “public interest AI”, such as the creation of data protection friendliness, anonymized health data for AI projects. A few 400 million EUR were pledged for a five -year donation goal of € 2.5 billion.
On Monday, General Catalyst Catalyst The Financial Times announced a broader investment group on Monday, which in the next five years wants to spend EUR 150 billion in order to use AI within companies, to invest in European AI start-ups and have a critical infrastructure in the region.
The plan, which has described the EU AI Champions initiative, is supposed to “set up Europe as a leader in AI worldwide”. Other private equity and venture investors who have joined the initiative are KKR, Blackstone, EQT, CVC and DST global. Some of the specific expenditure plans of the investors still have to be determined and depend on identifying investment options and other factors such as regulation.
The program is also supported by more than 60 European companies, including the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, the Swedish music streamer Spotify and the Italian investment group Exor. These companies undertake to “accelerate and take over the AI”, but have not committed themselves to specific expenses for technology.
The groups are expected to join in to present Ursula from the Leyen, President of the European Commission. New political recommendations are trying to shorten bureaucracy in order to harmonize and simplify the EU’s A and data laws.
Jeannette zu Fürststenberg, Managing Director of General Catalyst, said that she has corrected figures from European industry to shop in the European AI, and added: “We have a wake -up call and we are now deregulated, we activate , we get, we get, we get, we get, we get, we get, ready. “
The European start-ups have long been behind their American and Chinese colleagues because they are exposed to the use of regulations before a tough struggle due to inadequate financing, access to computing power and a lack of clarity.
For Macron, the summit is a chance to show that France can still have soft power in large global topics such as AI.
He has campaigned for Europe to develop its own AI platforms and applications in order not to rely on US and Chinese innovations for a technology that affects so many areas of companies, consumers and society.
In particular, he was a cheerleader of the Ki start-up-Mistral based in Paris, one of the few significant builders of a large voice model in Europe, and his managing director Arthur Mensch awaits that he is a star of the summit for the French.
Macron and other executives, such as the co-moderator-India, are expected to enter Narendra Modi for more “open” AI platforms such as the AI platforms created by Mistral and Deepseek, in contrast to the closed alternatives from Openaai and Google .
Yann Lecun, chief -ai scientist at Meta and a prominent French researcher, said US company with closed models “had a superiority complex that is laid” and added: “The open world catches up.”
Additional reporting by Ivan Levingston in London, Henry Foy and Barbara Moens in Brussels
