Paris is hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit as France announces ambitious plans to enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) sector. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance is attending the global gathering, with The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam joining the American delegation as part of the press pool.
French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce that his country anticipates investing €109 billion ($112 billion) in data centers and AI projects over the coming years. French officials claim this investment aims to position France as a leader in AI infrastructure, comparable to the United States and China. The scale of this investment is unprecedented in Europe.
Last week, the Elysée Palace—the seat of the French president—revealed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to invest between €30 billion and €50 billion to establish a large data center in France. Following this announcement, Brookfield Corporation from Canada also committed to a €20 billion investment in AI infrastructure within the country. Major French companies, including Iliad SA, Orange SA, and Thales SA, are expected to make additional investments, boosting France’s AI capabilities.
Recently, alleged technology advancements in China have sparked a flurry of activity in AI infrastructure. According to the Chinese company DeepSeek, they developed a ChatGPT large-language model clone for just $6 million compared to OpenAI’s $100 million spent on ChatGPT. Additionally, DeepSeek asserted that their LLM model required only one-tenth of the computing power used for Meta’s comparable model.
However, recent revelations suggest DeepSeek likely faked its data, and the cost and computing needs are similar to those of other AI LLM models.