San Francisco Frontiers - Macron beats French investment drum ahead of AI summit

Co-hosted with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit has a slew of stated aims including "mapping" AI governance around the world, promoting the idea of more ethical, accessible and frugal AI and pushing for European sovereignty over the technology.

But announcements ahead of the gathering could have been confused with Macron's annual "Choose France" investor conference, with tens of billions pledged for investment in projects including data centres in the host country.

France would receive "109 billion euros ($113 billion) of investment in artificial intelligence in the coming years" from the United Arab Emirates, "major American and Canadian investment funds" and French companies, Macron told broadcaster TF1 in a Sunday interview.

He also took time to plug French medical technology and homegrown generative AI developer Mistral.

The 109-billion-euro figure was "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," the $500-billion US programme led by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, he added.

The technical challenges and price of entry for nations hoping to keep abreast in the AI race have become clearer in recent weeks.

Chinese startup DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley heavyweights with its low-cost and high-performance AI models.

In the United States, President Donald Trump lent the aura of his office to the "Stargate" project to build computing infrastructure such as data centres.

"Europe has to find a way to take a position, take some initiative and take back control," said Sylvain Duranton of the Boston Consulting Group.

- Data centre buildup -

Monday's gathering of around 1,500 guests in the French capital's opulent Grand Palais will feature lectures and panel discussions outlining the promises of and challenges posed by AI from around 9:30 am local time (0830 GMT).

Macron wants to show off France's own tech sector, which has around 750 startups working in the AI field.

He will speak towards the end of Monday's event, after hosting heads of government and international investors at his Elysee Palace residence throughout the day.

From the tech world, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Arthur Mensch of French startup MistralAI are among the attendees.

Mensch said late Sunday that his company would invest several billion euros to build its own data centre in France.

The firm aims to "control the whole value chain, from the computer to the software," the 32-year-old said.

Data centres offer AI companies the vast storage capacity and processing power to develop and run their systems.

France has pushed itself as an ideal data centre host, betting on its offer of low-carbon electricity from its fleet of nuclear plants to attract investors.

The United Arab Emirates on Thursday pledged to build a data centre on an AI campus worth up to $50 billion, while Canadian investment fund Brookfield pledged 20 billion euros for multiple centres.

- Global governance puzzle -

Away from the investment grandstanding, a group of countries, companies and philanthropic organisations said Sunday they would pump $400 million into a partnership called "Current AI" that would foster "public interest" approaches to the technology.

Current AI aims to raise as much as $2.5 billion for its mission to grant AI developers access to more data, offer open-source tools and infrastructure for programmers to build on, and "develop systems to measure AI's social and environmental impact".

"We've seen the harms of unchecked tech development and the transformative potential it holds when aligned with the public interest," Current AI founder Martin Tisne said in the statement.

On Tuesday, political leaders from around 100 countries will hold a plenary session, with notable attendees including Modi, US Vice President JD Vance, China's Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.

But any agreement may prove elusive between blocs as diverse as the European Union, United States, China and India -- each with different priorities in tech development and regulation.

C.Diaz--SFF