France's response to Stargate: Macron announces the AI ​​investment

The French sector of artificial intelligence will receive EUR 109 billion (112.6 billion dollars) of private investments in the “coming years”, the president of Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday before the global AI peak in the country.

Talking to the French broadcaster TF1, Macron described the promise of many billion euros as “the equivalent of France what the United States announced with Stargate”, referring to the mass President of the US Donald Trump Donald Trump $ 500 billion private investment project AI.

The US joint undertaking, named Stargate, will see Openai, Oracle AND Softbank Spend up to $ 500 billion on AI infrastructure in America over the next four years.

Meanwhile, French financing will cover the obligations of the United Arab Emirates, American and Canadian investment funds as well as French companies, such as telecommunications companies Iliad I Orangeand the air and defense group Thales.

A few days before the peak of AI France, which began on Monday, ZEA said that it would invest from 30 billion euros to EUR 50 billion in building the One Gigawat data center in France as part of a campus focused on technology development.

Iliad has committed to spending EUR 3 billion on AI infrastructure, while the Parisian company AI Mistral announced plans to invest billions in the construction of its own data center in France.

Victor Riparbelli, general director of British Ai Startup Synthesia, said that Macron's investment plan 109 billion euros was a “great” thing for the European ecosystem AI-but added that more is needed for the continent to be able to compete with heavy techniques such as the Tech Heavyweights USA and China.

“We have to set the appropriate foundations so that Europe develops as an ecosystem,” said Rirparbella Arjun Kharpal from CNBC.

“It's great that we invest more in infrastructure. I don't think this is the only solution to the problem. There are many other things that we have to worry about. But what I think is really great, whether it is a political will, that it really is a political will do something – he added.

Older participants are the Vice President of the USA JD Vance, President of the EU Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Google CEO of Pichai, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Openai General Director, Altman himself, General Director of Google Deepmind Demsabis and general director of Anthropic Dario Amodei.

Elon Musk is currently not intended to participate.

On Saturday, Axios announced that Altman Opeli this week warns world leaders, that they must broaden their way of thinking AI, instead of just focusing on the risk – as is often the case in Europe – instead of this, leaders will want to accept growth and possibility.

The appearance of a breakthrough model AI in AI Deepseeka Deepseeka in recent weeks has caused debates in the industry around huge investment expenses that companies undertake to process infrastructure to train their systems.

Deepseek said that the total training costs for the latest AI model amounted to $ 5.6 million. However, Doubts about Deepseek claims were raised.

Last month, a semiconductor company dealing with research estimated that Deepseek expenditure is higher than $ 500 million In the company's history, adding that the costs of research and development and startup properties are significant.

On Sunday, Hassabis Google Deepmind said that the AI ​​Deepseek model is “probably the best work” that he saw from China – but he added that technology was not a big change.

“Despite the noise, there is no real new scientific progress … he uses known techniques (in AI),” said Hassabis, adding that the noise around Deepeek was “a bit exaggerated”.

Nevertheless, companies spend billions on data centers filled with advanced semiconductors from the American chips NvidiaThe new Deepseek model led to the worries of a potential bubble in AI space.

Before the peak of artificial intelligence, Mike Capone, general director of the American company of software Qlik, told CNBC that Deepseek will probably be the main point of discussion this week, when world governments are struggling with the progress of Chinese AI.

“This peak does not apply to AI – it is an impact,” said Capone in CNBC on Friday. “Expect a strategic war of sending messages like us, French and British leaders of AI, disregard the meaning of Deepseek, while China is working to prove that he not only makes up for the backlog – it's setting the pace.”

“AI diplomacy is now as critical as AI development. The struggle for power will not apply to the one who builds the best model; There will be about who controls AI's narrative, “he added.

– Arjun Kharpal from CNBC contributed to this report