PARIS, June 1, 2026, 15:06 CEST
France drew €93 billion ($108 billion) in corporate pledges at the Choose France summit on Monday, with SoftBank Group topping the list. The company plans to invest €45 billion in AI data centres in northern France. President Emmanuel Macron said the 71 projects are expected to make over 15,600 jobs.
France is trying to win AI data centre investment as demand for computing power tightens. AI models need huge data centres and reliable power. Officials are promoting France’s low-carbon energy, grid space, and quicker permitting to pull in fast-moving projects, especially as big builds accelerate in the U.S. and Asia.
SoftBank said it plans to build 3.1 GW of AI data-center capacity in Hauts-de-France by 2031 in the first phase, with data centers set for Dunkirk, Bosquel and Bouchain. The company put the total programme at up to €75 billion for 5 GW, which would be its biggest AI infrastructure spend in Europe. SoftBank said it will work with SB Energy and partners like Schneider Electric and EDF.
SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son told La Tribune Dimanche that Macron had been “persuasive and persistent,” calling the French proposal SoftBank’s largest European AI infrastructure move. Son said talks with Macron in Tokyo in April set up the deal, according to the interview. La Tribune
Ardian, the French private investment group, and its data centre arm Verne are planning a second major AI infrastructure buildout, this time in Île-de-France. The pair said they are targeting a €5 billion campus with 500 MW capacity, starting with over 200 MW before 2030. The new campus is set to serve high-performance computing, model training, and AI and industrial workloads.
Ardian’s Mathias Burghardt said the project goes with Europe’s push for “digital sovereignty.” Verne CEO Dominic Ward and Verne France head Roland Chedlivili described it as a step toward a European AI backbone. The companies said they expect it to create hundreds of direct and indirect jobs. Verne
AION, a group with Ardian, Artefact, Bull, EDF, Capgemini, Iliad, Orange and Scaleway, plans to use the Ardian-Verne site if it wins its bid to host a European AI gigafactory in France. In this case, “gigafactory” refers to a major AI computing site, not a battery facility. orange.com
SoftBank has company in the race for French AI. Brookfield is reportedly planning another €10 billion push into AI infrastructure, according to AFP via Boursorama. MGX and Bpifrance are close to picking a second site for about €7.5 billion. Salesforce also put up $2 billion through 2030 for AI work and training in Paris.
The summit covered more than servers. Marcegaglia, the Italian steelmaker, plans an extra €600 million for its Mistral project at Fos-sur-Mer, pushing the total to about €1.2 billion. Revolut will spend another €100 million in France by 2030 and add 200 jobs, according to Techniques de l’Ingénieur.
Marcegaglia’s plan shows a more defined industrial path than a lot of big promises. In April, Danieli said it signed a deal with Marcegaglia for a steelmaking and flat-rolling plant at Fos-sur-Mer. The site is set up to make over 2 million tonnes of liquid steel and up to 3 million tonnes of hot-rolled coils per year, with possible emissions cuts as high as 80% compared to older steelmaking methods.
Revolut is making another move in France. The London fintech said last year it would open its Western Europe headquarters in Paris, pursue a French banking licence, and spend more than €1 billion over three years. Its Western Europe CEO, Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier, told Reuters a French licence would let it launch local loans and regulated savings.
Pledges still need to turn into actual factories and grid hookups. Le Monde said France’s industrial recovery has lost steam since 2024; the country dropped almost 20,000 factory jobs in 2025 and joblessness sits at 8.1%. Olivier Lluansi, once an industry adviser at the Élysée, told the paper Macron’s industrial push is a “major disappointment” and cautioned that policies might stall ahead of the 2027 presidential vote. lemonde.fr
