By Michel Rose and Anton Bridge
PARIS, June 1 (Reuters) – Companies have pledged to invest €93 billion ($108 billion) in France, with half destined for a SoftBank-backed data centre project, as President Emmanuel Macron seeks to leverage nuclear capacity to make the country a global AI leader.
Macron said the 71 projects being unveiled at this year’s Choose France summit marked a record year for foreign investment and were expected to create more than 15,600 jobs at a time when the unemployment level, which remains higher than the EU average, has recently crept above 8%.
Japanese tech investor SoftBank will spend €45 billion to build three data centres with combined capacity of 3.1 gigawatts in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031.
That investment could potentially rise to €75 billion, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said ahead of Macron’s annual gathering of the global corporate elite, which was due to open at the former royal palace of Versailles later on Monday.
“It’s a massive size of investment coming,” Son said, adding that the project would help Europe catch up with the U.S. and China in AI computing capacity.
“We are doing that in the U.S. already, so we have the model, we have the momentum, and we can make France the centre of Europe (for AI). And Europe needs this kind of AI technology.”
The investment is the latest in SoftBank’s global AI infrastructure spending spree.
It has so far invested over $30 billion in OpenAI, taking an 11% stake in the ChatGPT developer, and has agreed to invest a further $30 billion in the company over the course of 2026.
It is also leading the financing of the $500 billion Stargate project to build out data centres in the United States.
“The U.S. is going fast. China is going fast. Europe, Japan, Asia have to also go fast, not to be left out,” said Son, speaking at the Elysee.
FRANCE MARKETING ITS NUCLEAR PRODUCTION CAPACITY
“For us it’s a great achievement,” Macron said of the SoftBank investment on Monday. “We are clearly bridging the gap we had in computing capacity in Europe.”
Macron is seeking to capitalise on France’s fleet of 57 nuclear reactors and growing electricity surplus to market the country as a hub for the AI sector and the power-thirsty data centres required to meet the new technology’s computing needs.
“France has been exporting electricity power,” Son said. “We can convert electricity, raw material, into more high-value intelligence, so France can export intelligence.”
The Japanese CEO said the deal had come together quickly after he met with Macron in Tokyo in April during a state visit.
“He asked me, ‘Masa, are you quick?’ I said, ‘I am quick’,” Son said.
He added that their teams had then worked to make the deal come together in time for Macron’s Choose France summit, which the president has used to court global CEOs and dealmakers for the past nine years.
Since 2018, the summits have seen the announcement of some 231 projects with investment pledges totalling €87 billion.
($1 = 0.8579 euros)
(Additional reporting by Hugo Lhomedet and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Dominique Patton and Joe Bavier)
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