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Announced as part of the Choose France summit hosted by president Emmanuel Macron, the investments will significantly enhance AI infrastructure in the country.
France has secured investment commitments from some big names in tech including Microsoft and Amazon ahead of an annual Choose France event that kicks of today (13 May).
Microsoft announced that it will invest €4bn in developing AI infrastructure in France. The investment, first reported by Le Figaro, will also see the creation of a new data centre in the French city of Mulhouse.
This comes just days after Microsoft announced a $3.3bn investment package for cloud and AI development in the US state of Wisconsin that will see the creation of an innovation lab and upskill more than 100,000 people in the emerging technology.
Microsoft has been rapidly investing in AI across the world: the UK last November; Germany and Spain in February of this year; Japan and Indonesia last month; and Malaysia earlier this month.
The company recently reported strong quarterly earnings and attributed its success to AI, while its dominance in the cloud sector has grown.
Meanwhile, Amazon has also announced its intention to invest more than €1.2bn in France, creating 3,000 new jobs and increasing Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure in the country – demand for which has increased since the use of generative AI first flourished.
The country has become an attractive hub for US companies looking to invest in AI in Europe. Meta and Google are among the global tech giants to set up AI research centres in France.
As part of the latest Choose France summit spearheaded by president Emmanuel Macron, healthcare giants Pfizer and Astra Zeneca announced investments totalling nearly €1bn and US bank Morgan Stanley announced it will grow its headcount by 100 at its Paris office, Reuters reports.
Two weeks ago, Amazon posted strong financial results in its latest quarterly earnings report with net sales up 13pc and operating income from its cloud services nearly doubled.
Amazon has been pumping billions into generative AI to enhance its business, particularly in cloud. Last November, AWS revealed an AI assistant called Q that is designed for business environments. In March, it invested $2.75bn into Anthropic (which recently opened its first EU office in Dublin) to complete a $4bn investment commitment it made last year.
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