Canadian investment firm Brookfield invests 2 billion euros (approximately $20.7 billion at current exchange rates) in French artificial intelligence projects by 2030, according to a report by LA Tribune Dimanche confirmed by the press agency AFP. I plan to do so. The majority of the total is used to build AI-centric data centers.
The announcement is the latest in a series of investment commitments as heads of state and global technical leaders plan to gather at the Artificial Intelligence Litigation Summit in Paris starting Monday.
According to La Tribune Dimanche, Brookfield’s investment of around 15 billion euros will be directed to a large data center in Cambrai, northern France. This data center has a capacity of up to 1 gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, such as building new electricity production capacity.
On Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced AI campus projects with large investments of up to 50 billion euros ($52 billion). Again, most investments will be directed to data centers with capacity up to 1 gigawatt.
There are two reasons why these mega investment projects are occurring now. First, on January 21, Openai, SoftBank, MGX and other partners announced the Stargate Project, a $500 billion investment program to build multiple data centers for AI in the US.
It is unclear how happy each investor is to actually commit to Stargate, but the announcement, coupled with Mario Draghi’s recent report on Europe’s competitiveness, has led to many European policymakers. It served as a wake-up call.
Second, the majority of France’s power generation production comes from nuclear power plants (approximately 65%) and renewable sources (approximately 25%). It also generates more power than necessary. High-tech companies are increasingly turning their eyes to France as an attractive location for power-hungry data centers as they struggle to cut their carbon footprint and find sufficient power capacity.
Other commitments from local businesses
Separately, French public investment bank Bpifrance has announced it is planning to invest 10 billion euros ($10.3 billion) in the French AI ecosystem. This is not a data center project. This is mainly because BPIFRANCE wants to back up more AI startups and become a limited partner for VC companies specializing in AI Investments. Bpifrance is already a Mistral, H, poolside shareholder.
Finally, Iliad, a telecommunications company founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, has allocated 3 billion euros to AI investments ($3.1 billion) with the help of financial partners such as Infravia. It will use around 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) to build a new AI-centric data center with “hundreds of megawatts of capacity.”
Scaleway, a France-based cloud computing company, is a subsidiary of Iliad. Therefore, new computing power may become available through Scaleway. Some European AI companies use Scaleway to train AI models such as Mistral, H, and Photoroom. (Interestingly, Xavier Niel is also an investor in Mistral and H.)
Together, France will receive 83 billion euros ($85 billion) of AI-related investments over the next few years, primarily related to data centers and infrastructure projects. And there may be more to the AI Action Summit.
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