France commits to building a gigawatt of new nuclear energy to accelerate its ambitions in artificial intelligence.

President Emmanuel Macron recently announced a significant injection of private investments into France's artificial intelligence ecosystem, amounting to €109 billion (equivalent to $112.5 billion). This announcement was made in a context where Paris is preparing to host the AI Action Summit, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

During a television interview, Macron stated that "Europe is about to accelerate, France will also accelerate." He compared this investment to the United States' Stargate program, which involves an investment of $500 billion, emphasizing that the ratio is similar despite the notable difference in population size between the two countries.

Additionally, it has been reported that France will commit to providing one gigawatt of nuclear energy to power a computing project related to artificial intelligence. France, which has a robust nuclear energy system with 57 reactors across 18 plants, exports approximately one-fifth of the electricity it generates, with more than two-thirds of its electricity consumption coming from this source.

FluidStack will lead the project and expects to begin work in the third quarter of 2024. By the end of 2026, the goal is to have 250 megawatts of energy connected to artificial intelligence computing chips, most of which will be supplied by Nvidia. FluidStack highlighted the potential to scale up the capacity to a 10-gigawatt facility by 2030.

This announcement complements the prior commitment made by Macron and the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, on February 6, which allocated between €30 million and €50 million ($31 million to $51.6 million) to establish a one-gigawatt AI center.