He President of France, Emmanuel Macronhas announced a investment of 109,000 million euros in AI in the framework of the artificial intelligence action summitwhich is being held this week in Paris, according to Techcrunch.
Macron has confirmed in an interview that the investment will be carried out over the next few years, and stressed that the investment represents the exact equivalent for France of what the United States has announced with Stargate (in terms of population).
For now, the complete list of entities that will participate in these investment plans will be unknown, although Macron has already mentioned, among others, Orange and Thales. It has been confirmed that most investments will be used for the construction of data prepared for AI.
The French president has also taken advantage of the interview to talk about French companies that have opened a headquarters in the United States, among which he is mystral. Macron has stressed that he believes that Europe is still competitive in regard to AI startups, and has even suggested that Depseek represents an opportunity for them to catch up, given that «They have taken all the accessible innovations of the latest OpenAI model and adapted them to their own model, with a more frugal approach«, Highlighting that everyone will continue doing what they have done.
Meanwhile, the CEO and one of Mistral’s founders, Arthur Menschhas also announced plans to invest several billion in a cluster of AI «That will be in Essone, so that we can train even more efficient systems in just a few months«. The company, which has its main headquarters in Paris, is one of the few European ones, if not the only one, which is working on the development of foundational models that can compete with those developed by Chinese and American companies.
But all these infrastructure construction plans for AI need an impulse in terms of electricity. At present, most of the electrical production of France is of nuclear origin, and the country also produces more electricity than it uses.
Therefore, the French government has announced that the country is committed to allocate an electricity gigawatio generated in nuclear plants to AI training by the end of 2026. In addition, they have presented the country as a suitable place for the construction of data centers, which ideally consume electricity generated without fossil energy intervention.
The EU rises the commitment to AI and asks for private support
As for the European Union, it is making winks to the private sector to support the progress they want to make in computing capacity for the training of large models of AI. In A speech at AI Action Summit, EU President Ursula von der Leyenhas talked about the potential of the startups born in the region, but noting that the developers of the area must have access to an infrastructure powerful enough to be able to climb their innovations and take out all the juice offered by technology.
Therefore, the EU is valuing to change its model to support the AI infrastructure. The pressure to launch computing hubs, and also talent, that they take advantage of the supercomputing infrastructure in the region, which the EU calls AI factories or factories, are not enough, pointing out that “Gigafactorias de AI” is needed To train very large models.
The EU president has revealed that, therefore, in the region they are going to «Expand the open cooperation model to be able to house avant -garde innovation in AI. Since AI needs an immense computing capacity, the next step will be to launch Gigafactories of AI. Computer infrastructures and very large data to train very large models. The United States has also announced similar projects, by the hand of the main actors of the AI. But with our European gigafactories, the computing power will not only be the monopoly of a few. It will be an accessible service for all«.
In addition, he stressed that «For AI, we need the private sector to be completely involved in our gigafactories. And we need more capital to make it possible«. It has also suggested that the EU could attract capital for the next phase of the development of the infrastructure of AI due to its tendency to adopt a collaborative approach instead of competitive in regard to the development of intellectual property, more focused on distributing and sharing knowledge Among the Member States in favor of the public good.
He also stressed that the approach that the EU will adopt will give researchers and startups a unique opportunity to access the latest generation computing infrastructure, in addition to «Allow different sectors of the industry to collaborate and federate their data. For example, it will allow hospitals to train safely based on the images and genomic data of their property, as well as unprecedented advances in basic science and climate modeling“, And stressed that Gigafactories of AI will be” open to the best talents. “
von der Leyen has also announced that The EU will allocate 50,000 million to invest in AI through the Investai initiativehow complement to a new investment of 150,000 million destined to boost the impulse of the AI applied in the region, developed by a group of private companies that will act under the name of the US Champions. Therefore, the EU is going to «Mobilize a total investment of 200,000 million to invest in AI in Europe, focusing on industrial and critical mission applications«.
