“One hundred and nine billion euros of investment in artificial intelligence [AI], over the next few years.” This is the amount announced by President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on Sunday, February 9, on France 2, on the eve of the opening of the AI Action Summit. Hosted at the Grand Palais, the event is expected to draw several dozen heads of state and 1,000 participants.
“It’s the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate,” added Macron, in reference to the $500 billion (€485 billion) investment announced in mid-January by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX for a gigantic data center complex, launched under the leadership of US President Donald Trump. At the time, the amount struck people as outrageous.
The figure of €109 billion is very significant. It mainly corresponds to data center projects, necessary to train and operate AIs, whose calculation chips cost several tens of thousands of dollars each.
A mega-project in Cambrai
On February 6, the United Arab Emirates announced between €30 billion and €50 billion of investment in a data center campus that would be the largest in Europe, as part of an AI partnership agreement signed with France. Although a location has yet to be named, the project will be developed by “a consortium of French-Emirati champions,” including the UAE-backed MGX investment fund, which has already invested in Stargate.
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