President Emmanuel Macron announced a record €93 billion in foreign investment pledges at the annual Choose France summit in Versailles on Monday, dwarfing the €87 billion raised over the previous eight editions combined. The figure, confirmed by the Élysée Palace, includes €45 billion from Japanese tech investor SoftBank for artificial intelligence infrastructure, marking a historic milestone for the event.
“This edition of Choose France alone will make it possible to crystallise a record amount of €93 billion in confirmed investments, for more than 15,000 jobs. It is obviously by far a record edition and it is historic,” Macron told executives gathered at the château west of Paris. Around 200 global business leaders attended the summit, which has become a key fixture in France's investment diplomacy since its launch in 2018.
SoftBank's AI Bet and Nuclear Advantage
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son confirmed plans to invest €75 billion in AI infrastructure across France, with €45 billion allocated by 2031 for data centres in the northern region. Son cited France's nuclear-powered electricity as a decisive factor, saying the country can “convert electricity as a raw material into more high-value intelligence,” including for export. The announcement builds on SoftBank's earlier commitment to Europe's largest AI project.
Canadian asset manager Brookfield will invest $10 billion (€8.5 billion) in a data centre in the Escaudain area of northern France. Investment firm Ardian and Nordic data platform Verne are putting $5 billion (€4.2 billion) into a data centre in the Paris region. US firm Salesforce announced $2 billion (€1.7 billion) in investment by 2030, including an AI hub in Paris. Taiwanese group Foxconn is expected to invest €120 million in Angers for a production line dedicated to AI motherboards, in partnership with French supercomputer specialist Bull.
Amazon, which earlier this month pledged more than €15 billion in France over three years and 7,000 jobs, said it would create an additional 1,000 jobs at three logistics centres. Macron said the projects span artificial intelligence, data centres, semiconductors, critical minerals, tractors, trucks, steel, and healthcare.
France's Investment Streak and Underlying Concerns
France has attracted the most foreign investment in Europe for seven straight years, according to consultancy EY, which recorded 852 projects in France last year out of 5,026 across 47 European countries. However, that figure represented a 17% drop in a difficult international environment. Macron acknowledged the achievement “does not come out of thin air,” but economist Sylvain Bersinger warned that the summit's announcements “must not obscure the fact that overall corporate investment in France is depressed, that reindustrialisation remains more of a pious wish than a reality and that France does not necessarily appear more attractive for foreign investors than its neighbours.”
France has notably attracted more AI-related projects than any other European country, but traditional industrial sectors such as automobiles, chemicals, and metallurgy have suffered. The summit also hinted at future announcements on rare earths, a critical area for Europe's strategic autonomy. Since the first Choose France in 2018, more than 230 projects have been announced, representing several thousand jobs, according to the Élysée Palace.
Macron framed the investments as a way to “make France by far the leading country hosting data centres” and “computing capacity in Europe,” as well as a “forward base for the production of AI robots and for industrialisation through AI.” He added, “We are clearly bridging the gap we had in computing capacities in Europe,” compared with the United States and China. The summit underscores France's push to position itself as Europe's AI hub, leveraging its low-carbon nuclear energy to attract capital-intensive data centre projects.
