On the eve of the Action for AI Summit in Paris on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a €109 billion ($112 billion) investment package from the private sector that will be injected into the country’s blossoming AI ecosystem in the coming years.
Overjoyed as he announced the news on French broadcaster France 2, Macron called it the “equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate,” referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement last month of a whopping $500 billion investment in AI, including $100 billion coming from OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and MGX, an Emirati AI investor.
As France’s population is five times smaller than that of the U.S., Macron said the AI investment in the country will have a similar ratio and will be used to build data center campuses, including one led by French company Mistral AI, Europe’s largest AI banner valued at €6 billion.
A big chunk of France’s private funding (between $30 billion to $50 billion) hails from the Arab Emirates and French investors. While Europe is a crucial market for AI alongside the U.S. and China, the average level of private sector money going into AI in Europe was 7% of global investment as of 2024, while the U.S. and China represent a combined 80% of it, according to a report compiled by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank.
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Despite this lagging in private coin across Europe, France has become a leader in technology thanks to its emphasis on research and development and the training of talents such as Arthur Mensch, the 32-year-old founder of Mistral AI. Robust public funding in AI, totaling €2.1 billion, is also part of the government’s France 2030 roadmap.
Ultimately, Macron said he hopes the influx of private money coming into the AI sector will allow not only France, but Europe as a whole, to play an even bigger role on the world stage and curb the U.S. and Chinese biases that are currently prevalent in AI tools.