Brookfield's €20 Billion Investment Boosts France's AI Infrastructure

Brookfield to Spend €20 Billion on France's AI Infrastructure

(Bloomberg) -- Brookfield Asset Management plans to invest €20 billion ($20.7 billion) to develop data centers and AI infrastructure in France over the next five years, as the competition to dominate artificial intelligence intensifies among global powers. The New York-based investment firm has allocated €15 billion to data center investments, which will be led by its portfolio company Data4, according to a statement. Brookfield plans to invest the remaining amount on AI infrastructure projects, such as data transfer, chip storage and energy generation across France. "France is a great location for the build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure because of the country's supportive policy framework and skilled labor," along with power availability, Sikander Rashid, Brookfield's head of Europe, said in an interview. Europe has lagged behind the US and China in the AI race and is now playing catchup. While a few French startups, such as Mistral AI SAS, have raised sizable amounts relative to European peers, they have struggled to compete with rivals. French President Emmanuel Macron has made his nation's ambitions in the field a priority and he's hosting an AI summit on Monday and Tuesday. "The €20 billion investment by Brookfield notably through Data4 will allow France to remain in the race alongside major AI players," Macron said in the statement. "We must not slow down, the world is accelerating. This is a battle for independence." Last week, the United Arab Emirates said it plans to spend between €30 billion and €50 billion on a new campus for data centers in France, Bloomberg reported. Brookfield, which opened an office in Paris in December, has about $30 billion of assets in the country and plans to double it in the next five years, Rashid said. The firm has more than €150 billion invested across digital infrastructure, renewable power and semiconductor manufacturing worldwide. La Tribune reported news on the investment earlier.

Brookfield to Spend €20 Billion on France's AI Infrastructure

Brookfield Asset Management plans to invest €20 billion ($20.7 billion) to develop data centers and AI infrastructure in France over the next five years, as the competition to dominate artificial intelligence intensifies among global powers. The New York-based investment firm has allocated €15 billion to data center investments, which will be led by its portfolio company Data4, according to a statement. Brookfield plans to invest the remaining amount on AI infrastructure projects, such as data transfer, chip storage and energy generation across France.

Brookfield to invest 20 billion euros in AI projects in France, Tribune reports

PARIS (Reuters) - Global investment firm Brookfield will invest 20 billion euros ($20.65 billion) to develop artificial intelligence related projects in France, French newspaper Tribune reported on Sunday. It added Brookfield will earmark 15 billion euros for data centres to be built across France and dedicate another 5 billion to infrastructure for data transfer, storage chips and renewable energy production. These projects are scheduled to run until 2030, the Tribune also reported. On Monday, France hosts the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, gathering in Paris heads of state and government, leaders of international organisations, CEOs of small and large companies, representatives of academia, non-governmental organisations, artists and members of civil society. (Reporting Camille Raynaud, Writing by by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Louise Heavens)

Investments in French AI ecosystem reach $85B as Brookfield commits $20B | TechCrunch

Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report from La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build AI-focused data centers. This announcement is the latest in a series of investment commitments as heads of state and global tech leaders plan to gather for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris starting on Monday. According to La Tribune Dimanche, around €15 billion of Brookfield's investment will go toward a massive data center in Cambrai in the North of France. This data center will have a capacity of up to one gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, including the construction of new electricity production capabilities. On Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced an AI campus project along with a large investment of up to €50 billion ($52 billion). Once again, most of the investment will go toward a data center with a capacity of up to one gigawatt. There are two reasons why these mega investment projects are occurring right now. First, on January 21, OpenAI, SoftBank, MGX and other partners unveiled the Stargate Project, a $500 billion investment program to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S. While it's unclear how much each investor is actually willing to commit to Stargate, this announcement -- combined with Mario Draghi's recent report on European competitiveness -- acted as a wake-up call for many policy-makers in Europe. Second, the majority of France's electricity production comes from nuclear power plants (around 65%) and renewable sources (around 25%). It also produces more electricity than it needs. Tech companies are struggling to reduce their carbon footprint and find sufficient electricity capacity, so they are increasingly looking to France as an attractive location for their power-hungry data centers. Separately, Bpifrance, France's public investment bank, announced that it plans to invest as much as €10 billion ($10.3 billion) in the AI ecosystem in France. This isn't a data center project, as Bpifrance mostly wants to back more AI startups and become a limited partner in VC firms specialized in AI investments. Bpifrance is already a shareholder in Mistral, H and Poolside. Finally, Iliad, the telecom company founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is allocating €3 billion toward AI investments ($3.1 billion) with the help of financial partners, such as Infravia. Around €2.5 billion ($2.6 billion) will be used to build new AI-focused data centers with "hundreds of megawatts of capacity." Scaleway, a cloud computing company based in France, is a subsidiary of Iliad. So the new computing power will likely be available through Scaleway. Some European AI companies have already used Scaleway to train their AI models, such as Mistral, H and Photoroom. (Interestingly, Xavier Niel also happens to be an investor in Mistral and H.) If you add up all these investment announcements, France could receive €83 billion ($85 billion) in AI-related investments in the coming years, primarily related to data centers and infrastructure projects. There might be more announcements in the coming days at the AI Action Summit in Paris.