Canadian investment firm Brookfield planning to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France. According to the reports from the La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by the news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build the AI-focused data centers.
This announcement is the latest feature in a series of investments that commitments as heads of state and global tech leaders plan to gather for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit of Paris.
According to La Tribune Dimanche report, around €15 billion of Brookfield’s investment will go toward a huge data center in Cambrai in the North of France. The data centers will have a capacity of up to one gigawatt. The rest will be used for the new infrastructure projects that include the construction of the new electricity production capabilities.
The data center will now have the capacity of up to one gigawatt of power. The rest will be now used for the new infrastructures and projects. That also included the consumption of the new electricity production capability.
An AI campus project and a significant investment of up to €50 billion ($52 billion) were announced by France and the United Arab Emirates on Friday. Once more, a data center with a maximum capacity of one gigawatt will receive the majority of the investment.
These massive investment projects are taking place at the moment for two reasons. First, the Stargate Project—a $500 billion investment scheme to construct several AI data centers in the US—was announced on January 21 by OpenAI, SoftBank, MGX, and other partners.
This declaration, along with Mario Draghi’s recent assessment on European competitiveness, served as a wake-up call for many European policymakers, even though it is unknown how much each investor is actually willing to commit to Stargate.
Second, nuclear power plants account for over 65% of France’s electricity generation, while renewable sources account for about 25%. Additionally, it generates more electricity than it requires. Tech corporations are increasingly seeing France as a desirable location for their power-hungry data centers as they struggle to find enough electrical capacity and decrease their ecological footprint.