Investments in the French AI ecosystem reach $ 85 billion while Brookfield engages $ 20 billion
Canadian investment company Brookfield plans to invest 20 billion euros by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $ 20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report La Tribune on Sunday confirmed by the press agency AFP. The majority of the amount will be used to build AI -oriented data centers.
This announcement is the last in a series of investment commitments while the heads of state and the world technological leaders plan to come together for the Summit of the action of artificial intelligence in Paris from Monday.
According to the Didanche tribune, around 15 billion euros in Brookfield’s investment will go to a massive data center in Cambrai in the north of France. This data center will have a capacity up to a gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, including the construction of new electricity production capacities.
Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced an AI campus project as well as a major investment 50 billion euros ($ 52 billion). Again, most investment will go to a data center with a capacity to a gigawatt.
There are two reasons why these mega-investments are currently performing. First of all, on January 21, Openai, SoftBank, MGX and other partners unveiled the Stargate projectAn investment program of $ 500 billion to create several data centers for AI in the United States.
Although it is unclear How many investor is really willing to engage in Stargate, this announcement – combined with the recent report On European competitiveness – acted as an alarm clock for many political decision -makers in Europe.
Second, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants (approximately 65%) and renewable sources (around 25%). It also produces more electricity than it needs. Technological companies find it difficult to reduce their carbon footprint and find sufficient electricity capacity, they therefore turn more and more towards France as an attractive location for their power centers eager for power.
Other commitments of local businesses
In addition, Bpifrance, the French public investment bank, announced that it planned to invest as much as 10 billion euros ($ 10.3 billion) in the AI ecosystem in France. It is not a data center project, because Bpifrance mainly wants to support more AI startups and become a limited partner in venture capital companies specializing in AI investments. Bpifrance is already a shareholder of Mistral, H and by the pool.
Finally, Iliad, the telecommunications company founded by the French billionaire Xavier Niel, allocates 3 billion euros to IA investments ($ 3.1 billion) using financial partners, such as Infravia. About 2.5 billion euros (2.6 billion dollars) will be used to build new AI -focused data centers with “hundreds of capacity megawatts”.
LadderA cloud computing company based in France is a subsidiary of Iliad. Thus, the new computing power will probably be available via Scaleway. Some European AI companies have already used Scaleway to train their AI models, such as Mistral, H and Photoroom. (Interesting fact, Xavier Niel is also an investor in Mistral and H.)
If you add all these announcements, France could receive 83 billion euros (85 billion dollars) in AI investments in the coming years, mainly linked to data centers and infrastructure projects. And there could be more to come at the top of the AI action.
