It is a “historic” amount, welcomes the Elysée. The 109 billion euros of foreign investments in AI in France, whose detail has just been unveiled this Monday, February 10, could relaunch the country and Europe in the race for artificial intelligence. While Deepseek, the Chinese prodigy, has just shaken the American giants with its ultra-performance and frugal artificial intelligence, France intends to do the same.
These investments confirm the attractiveness of France is delighted the Elysée, and in particular the interest in its decarbonized energy. Investments are in fact concentrated in the field of data centers, more and more numerous in France. These calculation centers are essential for the functioning of artificial intelligence.
“We could compare the data centers to the engines of the AI car, and software to its essence, explains Chadi Hantouche, specialist in artificial intelligence of the WavuStone consulting firm. The two are essential to operate artificial intelligences”. Motors, France is preparing to accommodate a lot under its hood: the vast majority of $ 109 billion announced relate to the construction of data centers and energy infrastructure. There are already the 50 billion euros engaged by the United Arab Emirates for the construction of an “IA campus”, which will host a cutting -edge data center of 1 GW. Then there are the six billion euros promised by Amazon for the development of cloud infrastructure in France, as well as the 5 billion of the American company Digital Realty for the construction of 13 new data centers in Marseille and in the Paris region .
The Canadian Investment Fund Brookfield participates up to 20 billion euros, including 15 billion for data centers and 5 billion in energy infrastructure and storage chips. Fluidstack, English specialist, announced to put 10 billion euros for the construction of a 1 Gigawatt supercomputer. 5 billion will come from the American Fund Apollo for data centers, $ 3.5 billion in prologis, and 400 million, invested by Telehouse, will be used to buy 25,000 GPUs in the south of France.
To these impressive sums coming from abroad, it is also necessary to add investments coming from France, including the 3 billion promised by Iliad and the 400 million sesterce for a Data Center in the Drôme.
The polarization of world tech
“It was said that Europe had lost the battle of the cloud, but these investments mark the will of France to be a leader in the subject of artificial intelligence,” observes Chadi Hantouche. This large investment plan should also reduce dependence on American cloud companies, which are now hosting the majority of data from the French industries. “These announcements intervene in a fairly large geopolitical moment, with an increasingly isolated American government,” said the expert.
A plan that has its limits, however, especially on the question of dependence. “Most of the investments come from foreign funds, outside the European Union. You have to know what counterparties will be in these investments,” points out the digital entrepreneur Rafik Smati. Another unknown: jobs. The Elysée is targeting 750 positions created by the IA campus project, including qualified jobs as Data Scientists or engineers, but it is difficult to estimate the number of jobs that will actually be created. Data centers are just a link in the AI value chain and not necessarily the most remunerative. “It is very good to work on infrastructure”, concedes Rafik Smati, “but it is the applications of artificial intelligence and the ability to create added value that must be aimed above all”.
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