Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report from La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build AI-focused data centers.
This announcement is the latest in a series of investment commitments as heads of state and global tech leaders plan to gather for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris starting on Monday.
According to La Tribune Dimanche, around €15 billion of Brookfield’s investment will go toward a massive data center in Cambrai in the North of France. This data center will have a capacity of up to one gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, including the construction of new electricity production capabilities.
On Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced an AI campus project along with a large investment of up to €50 billion ($52 billion). Once again, most of the investment will go toward a data center with a capacity of up to one gigawatt.
There are two reasons why these mega investment projects are occurring right now. First, on January 21, OpenAI, SoftBank, MGX and other partners unveiled the Stargate Project, a $500 billion investment program to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.
While it’s unclear how much each investor is actually willing to commit to Stargate, this announcement — combined with Mario Draghi’s recent report on European competitiveness — acted as a wake-up call for many policy-makers in Europe.
Second, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants (around 65%) and renewable sources (around 25%). It also produces more electricity than it needs. Tech companies are struggling to reduce their carbon footprint and find sufficient electricity capacity, so they are increasingly looking to France as an attractive location for their power-hungry data centers.
Other commitments from local companies
Separately, Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, announced that it plans to invest as much as €10 billion ($10.3 billion) in the AI ecosystem in France. This isn’t a data center project, as Bpifrance mostly wants to back more AI startups and become a limited partner in VC firms specialized in AI investments. Bpifrance is already a shareholder in Mistral, H and Poolside.
Finally, Iliad, the telecom company founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is allocating €3 billion toward AI investments ($3.1 billion) with the help of financial partners, such as Infravia. Around €2.5 billion ($2.6 billion) will be used to build new AI-focused data centers with “hundreds of megawatts of capacity.”
Scaleway, a cloud computing company based in France, is a subsidiary of Iliad. So the new computing power will likely be available through Scaleway. Some European AI companies have already used Scaleway to train their AI models, such as Mistral, H and Photoroom. (Interestingly, Xavier Niel also happens to be an investor in Mistral and H.)
If you add up all these investment announcements, France could receive €83 billion ($85 billion) in AI-related investments in the coming years, primarily related to data centers and infrastructure projects. There might be more announcements in the coming days at the AI Action Summit in Paris.
