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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 ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris which starts on Monday, featuring discussions between world leaders and AI executives such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
It come 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.
To that end, France will announce on Monday that companies have agreed to invest €109bn in AI projects in the country in the coming years.
“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 are part of the global race to develop and commercialise cutting-edge technology.
One investment in France will be from the United Arab Emirates, which said last week that it will 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.
On Sunday, Canadian asset manager Brookfield also announced a €20bn investment to support the deployment of AI infrastructure in France.
Another outcome of the Paris summit will be the creation of a non-profit investment fund called Current AI that aims to further so-called “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.
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.
Macron and other leaders, such as co-host India’s premier Narendra Modi, are expected to advocate 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, Henry Foy and Barbara Moens in Brussels
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