Foreign investors have committed a record €93bn as part of the annual Choose France event hosted this week by president Emmanuel Macron, with much of the funding driven by AI infrastructure projects.
A significant part of the commitments came from Japanese tech giant SoftBank, which is investing an initial €45bn into French AI data centres, with plans to follow up for a total investment of €75bn.
The Choose France investment summit, held every year since 2018, gathers hundreds of CEOs, investors and industry players from around the world. The previous eight editions combined raised a total of €87bn from foreign investors, meaning this year’s event is the largest by far.
Beyond SoftBank’s blockbuster announcement, Canadian investment firm Brookfield pledged an additional €10bn for French AI infrastructure, on top of the €20bn it committed last year.
The AI Campus —a €50bn joint venture launched in 2025 by French AI darling Mistral, Abu Dhabi fund MGX, French public bank Bpifrance and chip titan Nvidia — expanded its ambitions from 1 gigawatt (GW) to 3 GW of planned capacity, representing a further €7.5bn investment.
Dutch neocloud Nebius also announced plans to deploy more than €8bn over the next few years to build out French AI data centres.
AI infrastructure
Representing nearly half of the commitments secured at the summit, SoftBank’s announcement is the Japanese tech giant’s largest investment in AI infrastructure in Europe.
A first phase representing €45bn in funding is expected to deliver more than 3GW of AI compute capacity by 2031, thanks to new data centres in three locations across northern France.
SoftBank has pledged to invest another €30bn (making for a total €75bn) to extend capacity to 5GW, which would make the initiative Europe’s biggest data centre project to date. The Japanese company says this will create “thousands” of jobs in the country.
“SoftBank’s decision to invest massively in AI datacenters in France [...] reflects our country’s substantial assets: fast access to the most reliable electrical grid in Europe, a strong digital and industrial ecosystem with a skilled workforce and a government that works in unison with local authorities and stakeholders to fast-track procedures for strategic projects,” said French minister of economy Roland Lescure in a statement.
France has sought to establish itself as a prime destination to build AI data centres in recent years, pitching the country’s carbon-free electricity as an attractive asset to deploy energy-intensive compute capacity.
During the AI Action Summit hosted in France last year Macron announced a total €109bn in commitments from private investors to build AI infrastructure across the country, a move described as a response to the rapid build-out of data centre capacity in the US, including the Stargate project — a $500bn infrastructure plan unveiled in 2025 to meet the compute demands of AI giant OpenAI.
Of the 13 companies that made an investment commitment last year, 11 have now identified at least one site in France to deploy infrastructure, according to the French government.
Choose France
Although AI is increasingly at the heart of the announcements made during the Choose France summit, the event also covers other tech and non-tech sectors, from culture and tourism to defence and space.
British-Portuguese drone maker Tekever pledged to invest €100m in France and to create 100 new roles over the next five years, doubling the company’s 2025 commitment to a total of €200m and 200 employees.
Fintech giant Revolut, which last year announced a hefty €1bn investment into the country, has committed to deploying another €100m by 2030, creating 200 new jobs and bringing its total workforce in France to 650 people.
