SoftBank Bets 75 Billion Euros on French AI Data Centres
SoftBank has announced plans to build AI data centre infrastructure across France with a total capacity of 5 gigawatts, representing an investment of up to 75 billion euros. The announcement landed at President Macron's Choose France summit, which has become something of a magnet for organisations happy to make large, photogenic commitments.
The first phase is the more concrete of the two: 45 billion euros, 3.1 gigawatts of capacity, spread across sites in Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain in the Hauts-de-France region, with a 2031 target. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son declared France ideally placed to become Europe's AI infrastructure capital, which is exactly the sort of thing you say when you want planning permissions to go smoothly.
At Dunkirk, SoftBank is partnering with Schneider Electric to build a manufacturing cluster for data centre components. Economy Minister Roland Lescure was understandably enthusiastic, citing France's grid access, industrial ecosystem, and faster permitting as key draws. Thousands of jobs are expected to materialise, as they always are at these announcements.
The Bosquel site involves a tie-up with French startup Sesterce to build what they're calling an 'AI factory', combining compute, energy infrastructure, and local partnerships. Sesterce's CEO described it as a defining moment for sovereign AI in Europe. France is also home to Mistral, currently the only EU-based AI lab producing competitive large language models, which gives the country a slightly stronger claim to AI relevance than most of its neighbours.
Of course, SoftBank's recent history of grand infrastructure announcements deserves scrutiny. The company is involved in a sprawling list of global projects, many of which remain firmly in the announcement phase.
In the US, SoftBank is a central player in the Stargate project. In Abu Dhabi, a joint venture with G42 is targeting up to one gigawatt of capacity under the 'Stargate UAE' banner. In Japan, SoftBank is attempting to corral domestic industrial heavyweights including Sony, Honda, NEC, and three major banks into building a homegrown trillion-parameter foundation model, with processing confined to Japanese soil and a former Sharp LCD factory in Osaka repurposed for the effort.
A UK Stargate site has been floated, with OpenAI involved, but that is reportedly on hold while the US rollout sorts itself out. In South Korea, Son met with President Lee Jae Myung late last year to discuss semiconductor and AI collaboration, and a chip design facility is being set up to tap South Korean manufacturing expertise. SoftBank also acquired British chip company Graphcore and pumped in an additional $457 million. Graphcore is now apparently investing up to a billion pounds in an AI campus in Bengaluru.
SoftBank is also one of OpenAI's biggest backers, and has been borrowing against that stake to fund its investment binge. That approach hit a snag in May when Bloomberg reported that one loan had been cut from $10 billion to around $6 billion, with lenders quietly expressing doubts about what OpenAI is actually worth.
The France announcement is genuinely large. Whether it joins the list of SoftBank projects that get built or the list of ones that generate better press releases than foundations, we will find out sometime around 2031.