French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced in Paris that he will invest 109 billion euros in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the next few years. The launch of this program comes as the AI Action Summit held in Paris, which attracted the participation of many global leaders and AI business executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
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Macron said in an interview with France 2 TV that this investment plan in France is comparable to the US "Stargate" project. The project is led by OpenAI and SoftBank, with an investment of up to $500 billion. Meanwhile, big tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have raised a total of $300 billion this year for AI-related capital expenditures. Companies such as China's DeepSeek have also made significant progress in the development of low-cost AI models, while Huawei has increased its competitiveness against market leader Nvidia in the chip field.
To this end, Macron emphasized: "Europe and France must accelerate investment." In addition, the UAE has also announced that it will invest up to 50 billion euros to build a data center campus in France. The initial fund will come from the MGX Fund in Abu Dhabi, which is also one of the $100 billion investment vehicles involved in the Stargate project. Meanwhile, Canadian asset management company Brookfield has announced that it will support the deployment of AI infrastructure in France, with an investment of 20 billion euros.
The Paris Summit will also create a nonprofit investment fund called "Current Artificial Intelligence" to further promote the development of "public interest AI", such as creating privacy-friendly anonymous medical data for AI projects. €2.5 billion is expected to be raised in the next five years.
European startups have long been at a disadvantage in their competition with their U.S. and Chinese counterparts, mainly due to insufficient funds, lack of computing power, and unclear on how to apply relevant regulations. Macron hopes to show through this summit that France can still exert influence on major global issues, and calls on Europe to develop its own AI platforms and applications to reduce its dependence on US and China's innovation.
At the summit, Macron and co-sponsored Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will advocate the development of open and shared AI platforms, rather than relying on closed products from companies such as OpenAI and Google. Meta's chief AI scientist Jan Lekuen also said that the closed model of American companies has a sense of superiority to some extent, emphasizing that the open AI world is quickly catching up with them.
Macron announced that he would invest 109 billion euros in the development of artificial intelligence in France in the next few years. The UAE and Canadian Asset Management companies have also announced significant investments in AI infrastructure respectively. The Paris Summit will promote open-shared AI platforms to reduce reliance on U.S. and Chinese technologies.