French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the plenary session of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, Feb 11, 2025. [Photo/Agencies]
France's President Emmanuel Macron has used a global summit in Paris to announce an artificial intelligence, or AI, investment plan worth 109 billion euros ($112.4 billion).
Macron made the announcement in a bid to establish France and Europe as major players in the fast-moving world of the new and still emerging technology, which is currently led by the United States and China.
Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump unveiled a $500-billion AI infrastructure project called Stargate.
"This is the equivalent for France of what the US announced for Stargate," Macron said, adding that "Europe and France must accelerate their investments".
His initial touting of France was backed up on Tuesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's announcement of a European AI strategy, which Macron said would be a "unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate" in the AI field.
"We have to provide a bigger domestic market to all the startups when they start as Europeans," he added.
Macron also urged Europe to cut back on regulation to make it easier for artificial intelligence to flourish in the region.
"We will simplify," Macron said. "It's very clear we have to resynchronize with the rest of the world."
In her speech at the summit, von der Leyen said: "Global AI leadership is still up for grabs … too often I hear that Europe is late to the race, while the United States or China already got ahead."
She said the bloc's goal "is that every company, not only the big players, have access to the computing power they need", as she unveiled a new 20-billion-euro fund called InvestAI, which she heralded as "the largest public investment for AI in the world, which will unlock over 10 times more private investment".
The EU's digital chief Henna Virkkunen also promised the bloc would simplify its rules and implement them in a business-friendly way.
US Vice-President JD Vance also attended the summit in his first overseas trip in his new position and expressed a more hands-off approach to AI development championed by the US.
In his address to the summit, Vance underlined just how keenly fought the battle for supremacy in the new technology will be, and warned that "excessive regulation "could cripple the rapidly growing AI industry in a rebuke to European efforts to curb its risks.
"Now, at this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution, one on par with the invention of the steam engine," he said. "But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball."
He picked out the European Union's Digital Services Act as something that has created "massive regulations … about taking down content and policing so-called misinformation", which he said put unfair burdens on major US technology companies.
According to the Associated Press, the US was absent from a joint statement signed by more than 60 nations at the summit, pledging to "promote AI accessibility to reduce digital divides" and "ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy".
