France secures €109bn AI investment to counter Stargate and US tech dominance

February 11, 2025 10:23 AM

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France is challenging the US's OpenAI-led Stargate project with President Emmanuel Macron announcing €109 billion (USD$112 billion) in AI infrastructure investments.

Speaking during the AI Action Summit taking place in Paris, President Macron said the investments compared to “ big recent announcements made in the US” were “at the right scale”.

The United Arab Emirates, MGX, and Canadian investment giants Brookfield are among those supporting the €109 billion investments, while France’s own Iliad is set to splurge €3 billion on AI infrastructure projects.

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President Macron said the investments would help make France more attractive to companies developing AI, claiming France is in the race to scale up.

“Everybody thought you always had to be bigger and stronger. What did DeepSeek do with its open models? They have taken all accessible innovations from the latest OpenAI model and adapted them to their own model, using a more frugal approach. Everyone will continue to do this. And that’s why you have to be in this race,” the President said.

The Trump administration was buoyed by the Stargate project, which is being supported by OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX to scale up computing infrastructure in the US for training efforts.

MGX and the UAE are also backing the French project, with the fund backing the construction of a mammoth gigawatt-scale data centre representing around €30 to 50 billion.

CNBC reports telecoms giant Orange and defence firm Thales are also looking to commit to projects in France.

Prior to the event, investment firm Brookfield revealed plans to invest €20 billion into French AI infrastructure, including up to €15 billion into data centres through its Data4 subsidiary.

The AI Action Summit is the latest iteration of the global governance event following an initial event held by the UK government in November 2023, with world leaders gathering to discuss AI safety considerations.

France is already home to several major AI startups, most notably Mistral AI, which announced this week it’s building an AI cluster to power its training efforts.