France announces €109 billion government investment to develop domestic AI infrastructure and ecosystem.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced an investment initiative that will inject €109 billion, or $112 billion, into the country's artificial intelligence ecosystem, detailed at the AI Action Summit being held this week in Paris. The two-day event is expected to draw hundreds of government officials, academics and private sector experts. According to TechCrunch, most of the €109 billion allocated to the initiative will be used to build AI-optimized data centers. Between €30 and €50 billion is set to be provided by the United Arab Emirates through UAE-based investment firm MGX, which is also backing Project Stargate, OpenAI's similar initiative in the U.S. launched last month that will see ChatGPT's developer team up with Oracle Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp. to build AI-optimized data centers at a cost of as much as $500 billion.

"This is the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate — $500 billion — it's the same ratio," Macron said. Additional funding comes from Toronto-based investment firm Brookfield, which is providing €20 billion and helping Intel Corp. upgrade its fab complex in Arizona, while French investment bank Bpifrance is investing €10 billion and Iliad SA, one of the country's largest internet providers, is adding €3 billion. Macron said that Iliad rival Orange Group and aerospace company Thales SA will participate as well.

Mistral, an AI provider developing large language models and a consumer chatbot called Le Chat, disclosed today that it is constructing a multibillion-dollar AI data center south of Paris expected to come online in the coming months. Mistral stated that its data center will use the "latest chips" without elaborating, though the company disclosed last week it is using processors from Nvidia Corp. rival Cerebras Systems Inc. to power its Le Chat chatbot. Cerebras sells a wafer-sized AI chip featuring 4 trillion transistors organized into nearly 1 million cores.

The €109 billion plan is one of several initiatives announced at the AI Action Summit. Another project, the EU AI Champions Initiative designed to support AI startups and infrastructure construction in the European Union, is reportedly backed by General Catalyst, KKR, Blackstone, EQT and other institutional investors, with more than 60 companies participating. A third initiative, ROOST, which stands for Robust Open Online Safety Tools and is designed to encourage the development of AI safety tools, is reportedly supported by $27 million in funding from OpenAI, Google LLC and other backers. Current AI, an open-source initiative also backed by Google aimed at making AI training datasets, development tools and infrastructure resources more accessible, has raised €400 million to date with the goal of securing another €2.1 billion over the next five years.