French President Emmanuel Macron has revealed that France will announce €109 billion ($112.5 billion) in private sector investments in the artificial intelligence sector during the AI summit in Paris, which kicks off on Monday.
According to Macron, these investments include plans by Canadian investment firm Brookfield to pump €20 billion into AI projects in France, in addition to Emirati funding that could reach up to €50 billion over the coming years.
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The Élysée Palace indicated that the Emirati investment will include funding for the establishment of a 1-gigawatt data center, while the newspaper La Tribune du Dimanche reported that the bulk of Brookfield’s investments will be directed toward a data center.
Notably, artificial intelligence requires massive amounts of energy to run large data centers, a challenge facing Europe amid rising future demand.
In a related context, former US President Donald Trump announced last month investments worth $500 billion by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle in AI infrastructure over the next four years, aimed at keeping the United States ahead in the global AI race against China and its competitors.
