France to invest 109bn euros in AI, Macron announces at Paris summit

French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday announced a significant investment in artificial intelligence (AI) ahead of a two-day summit in Paris, AFP reported.

Co-hosted with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the event aims to address global AI governance, ethics, accessibility, and European sovereignty over AI technologies. 

Macron revealed that France would receive 109 billion euros ($113 billion) from international investors, including the UAE, major American and Canadian investment funds, and French companies, marking a key move in strengthening the country's AI infrastructure.

Macron's announcement mirrors the scale of the US AI investment, with the $500-billion "Stargate" project backed by OpenAI in the United States. 

He also highlighted the significance of the investment, noting that it is equivalent to the scale of the US initiative, which aims to develop data centres and computing infrastructure necessary to advance AI technology. 

The development comes at a time when the technical barriers to AI progress are becoming more apparent, particularly after Chinese startup DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with its high-performance AI models.

The Paris summit will feature discussions from 1,500 attendees, including international investors, heads of state, and prominent tech figures like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and MistralAI’s Arthur Mensch. The event’s purpose is to explore AI’s potential, with a strong focus on balancing its benefits and challenges. 

One of the central topics of the summit is the development of data centres, essential for AI’s future. MistralAI announced plans to invest billions of euros to build a data centre in France, aiming to control the entire AI value chain from software to hardware. France’s nuclear power plants make it an attractive location for these high-energy operations.

Global AI governance and public interest approaches

While the investment news steals the spotlight, there are also efforts to ensure AI development serves public interests. A new initiative, "Current AI," will receive $400 million from a consortium of countries, companies, and philanthropic organisations. 

This partnership aims to provide open-source tools and data to developers, fostering an ethical approach to AI development. Political leaders will gather on Tuesday to discuss AI governance, though reaching a consensus among diverse regions such as the EU, the US, China, and India may prove challenging.