During his speech on the 8pm news on France 2, the President of the Republic wanted to show that Europe could stand up to Donald Trump’s $500 billion project, by announcing a huge 109 billion euros of investment into AI.
France — Billions continue to rain down on AI. On the occasion of the International AI Summit, which is taking place in Paris on Monday and Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron announced, on Sunday evening during the 8pm news on France 2, investments of 109 billion euros in France in “the years to come”. This gigantic amount includes the investment of the United Arab Emirates (between 30 and 50 billion) and the 20 billion from the Canadian investment fund Brookfield.
Other investments will be announced at the Summit, according to the Elysée. The figure of 109 billion was not chosen by chance. It is the equivalent of Donald Trump’s $500 billion (Stargate) reported to the population. Led by OpenAI and the Japanese SoftBank, this plan should allow investment in data centers, these factories that host servers running algorithms.
“We have to be in the race. We want to be there, we want to innovate. Otherwise we will depend on others,” said Emmanuel Macron, who took the opportunity to highlight French nuclear power and encourage major cloud providers to open more of them in France.
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“Be patriots yourselves”
The President of the Republic also took the opportunity to challenge large French companies, which do not work much with the country’s AI start-ups. “I say: all hands on deck. Be patriotic yourselves,” Emmanuel Macron said.
Mentalities are gradually changing. Stellantis has just signed a partnership with the French Mistral AI (OpenAI competitor) for two projects: assistance for engineers and an on-board conversational robot for drivers. “Mistral’s AI will help you drive. It will make Peugeot stronger,” illustrated the President of the Republic, twice calling for downloading the Mistral application, which has just been released .
During his speech, Emmanuel Macron also wanted to highlight other start-ups such as Owkin (medical research) and Wandercraft (exoskeletons). “I hope Owkin will come back!” he said. The unicorn founded by French people has its headquarters in the United States, unlike Mistral, which is based in France.
Asked about Deepseek, the Chinese AI that has been causing a sensation for several weeks, he replied that it was not “relevant to ban an application based on its country, but we will look at the points of sensitivity when sovereignty is at stake.”
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