French president hails historic €93 billion foreign investment windfall

Companies have pledged to invest €93 billion ($108 billion) in France, with roughly half of the sum earmarked for a SoftBank-backed data centre project, as President Emmanuel Macron seeks to leverage the country’s nuclear energy capacity to position France as a global leader in artificial intelligence.

Macron said the 71 projects announced at this year’s “Choose France” summit represent a record level of foreign investment and are expected to create more than 15,600 jobs, at a time when unemployment in France—still above the EU average—has recently risen above 8%, Reuters reports.

Japanese technology investor SoftBank will invest €45 billion to build three data centres with a combined capacity of 3.1 gigawatts in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031.

That investment could potentially rise to €75 billion, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said ahead of Macron’s annual summit of global business leaders, held at the Palace of Versailles.

“It’s a massive size of investment coming,” Son said, adding that the project would help Europe close the gap with the United States and China in AI computing capacity.

“We are doing that in the US already, so we have the model, we have the momentum, and we can make France the centre of Europe (for AI). And Europe needs this kind of AI technology.”

The investment marks the latest step in SoftBank’s global push into AI infrastructure. The company has already invested more than $30 billion in OpenAI, acquiring an 11% stake in the ChatGPT developer, and has committed a further $30 billion investment over the course of 2026.

It is also leading financing for the $500 billion Stargate project aimed at building large-scale data centres in the United States.

“The US is going fast. China is going fast. Europe, Japan, Asia have to also go fast, not to be left out,” Son said.

“For us it’s a great achievement,” Macron said of the SoftBank deal. “We are clearly bridging the gap we had in computing capacity in Europe.”

Macron is seeking to capitalise on France’s 57 nuclear reactors and growing electricity surplus to promote the country as a hub for AI development and the energy-intensive data centres required to support the sector.

“France has been exporting electricity power,” Son said. “We can convert electricity, raw material, into more high-value intelligence, so France can export intelligence.”

The SoftBank CEO said the agreement was reached rapidly after a meeting with Macron in Tokyo in April.

“He asked me, ‘Masa, are you quick?’ I said, ‘I am quick,’” Son said.

He added that teams from both sides worked quickly to finalise the deal ahead of the “Choose France” summit, which Macron has used for nine years to attract global investors.

Since 2018, the summits have resulted in around 231 announced projects, with total investment pledges amounting to €87 billion.

By Vafa Guliyeva