French President Emmanuel Macron has revealed a groundbreaking €109bn investment in artificial intelligence (AI), positioning France at the forefront of Europe’s efforts to close the technology gap with the US and China. The announcement, made just ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris, aims to strengthen France’s role in the global AI race. The summit will bring together prominent executives, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, to discuss the future of AI technology.
The funding will see significant contributions from both French and international companies, with major investments already pledged, including a €50bn commitment from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a new data center campus and €20bn from Canadian asset manager Brookfield to support AI infrastructure in France. The investments underscore Macron’s determination to make France and Europe key players in the rapidly growing AI sector.
Macron emphasized the need for Europe to catch up with global competitors, such as the $500bn Stargate project in the US, led by OpenAI and SoftBank, and major AI investments from Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Huawei. “Europe and France must accelerate their investments,” Macron said in an interview with France 2 television, referring to the initiative as comparable to the US’s Stargate project.
As the global AI race intensifies, the French president is also focusing on fostering a more open and collaborative approach to AI development. One of the key goals of the Paris summit will be the creation of Current AI, a nonprofit fund designed to advance “public interest AI,” including projects focused on privacy-friendly healthcare data. An initial €400mn has been pledged toward the fund’s five-year fundraising target of €2.5bn.
In addition to institutional investments, Macron has been vocal in supporting European AI startups, particularly Mistral, a Paris-based company that has developed one of Europe’s leading large language models. This initiative reflects France’s broader ambition to develop homegrown AI solutions and reduce reliance on US and Chinese technologies.
In a statement taken from the Financial Times, Macron expressed confidence that these investments would help France not only accelerate AI innovation but also foster greater European collaboration. As Macron prepares to host leaders such as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit will showcase France’s ambition to shape the future of AI on its own terms.
Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist and a leading French researcher, also joined Macron in advocating for more open AI platforms, pointing to the growing competitiveness of European open models like those developed by Mistral and Chinese company DeepSeek, in contrast to the closed models of industry giants like OpenAI and Google.
