“I have a good friend on the other side of the ocean that says: ‘Perfora, love, drill!'” Emmanuel Macron said this week in reference to Trump’s efforts to increase oil extraction. “But here it is not necessary to pierce. Here is only: ‘Plug, honey, plug!’ Electricity is availableyou just have to connect, ”added the French president during a summit on artificial intelligence (AI) held in Paris.
The message is quite clear and reflects France’s intention to take advantage of its energy ecosystem as a strategic advantage to consolidate its role in the development of AI. The European country exported more than 90 teravatos time (SWV) of electricity in 2024, which, according to the government, allows not only to cover the current needs of its companies and homes, but also to house a large number of data centers.
Nuclear energy, the key of France
The aforementioned declaration of intentions has come accompanied by two ambitious agreements. As we pointed out at the end of last week, the United Arab Emirates promised to make a multimillion -dollar investment in France to build a data center from 1 Gigavatio within a Largest AI campus in Europe. Yesterday, the announcement of the AI platform in the fluidstack cloud was formalized.
Fluidstack, a British firm with clients such as Mistral AI and Character.AI, plans to establish a 1 gigavatio data center on Gallic floor, completely driven by nuclear energy. It is expected that the first phase of the project, promoted by 10,000 million dollars (10,360 million dollars) to materialize in 2026. The agreement, which bears the signing of several French ministers, leaves the door open to later stages in 2028.
As in many parts of the world, building a data center in France implies challenges, including bureaucracy. To facilitate the process, the Government has assured that the National Electric Management Company will guarantee the necessary supply. As a whole, this should be translated not only in a better position in France in the AI career, but also the creation of “thousands of jobs” of research and infrastructure.
France’s relationship with nuclear energy has evolved over time. A decade ago, the country announced a plan to reduce its dependence on this source from 70% to 50%, but in 2022 the strategy took a turn and the initiative was discarded. Instead of limiting its use, the government chose to expand it with the construction of new reactors. Currently, France has 57 reactors distributed in 18 plants.
These movements are allowing the country led by Macron to gain advantage over other countries in the region and the world. Although data centers can operate with ENergía Solar and Windthe intermittency of these sources raises additional challenges. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, guarantees a stable supply and large scale. In addition, the new generation of small modular reactors (SMR) reinforces this scenario.
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