French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said companies have pledged a total of €93 billion ($108 billion) worth of investments in France at this year’s Choose France summit, covering 71 projects and expected to create more than 15,600 jobs.
The total includes 45 billion euros from SoftBank for three data centres with 3.1 gigawatts of capacity in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031, with the investment potentially rising to 75 billion euros, he added.
Macron has sought to leverage France’s fleet of 57 nuclear reactors to market the country as a hub for artificial intelligence and data centres, which require vast amounts of preferably clean energy to run their computing power. He has summed up the strategy as “plug, baby, plug”.
“The AI data centre investment is €75 billion, but if you include chips and systems, it is going to be close to $750 billion,” said SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.
He added that SoftBank would not fund the entire amount, but would use project financing and work with hyperscale customers.
($1 = 0.8579 euros)
(Reporting by Hugo Lhomedet, Dominique Vidalon, Michel Rose and Anton Bridge)
