How is Brookfield Boosting French AI Ambitions?
At the Paris AI Summit, President of France Emmanuel Macron announced private sector investments of €109bn (US$112.5bn) in his country’s AI industry, telling those gathered that France was “back in the AI race”.
He cited the nation’s clean energy infrastructure as one of the key reasons companies and organisations should invest in French AI in order to mitigate some of the concerns about the technology’s environmental footprint as it develops.
Investment firm Brookfield Asset Management, one of the largest investors in the AI value chain globally with more than €150bn (US$157bn) invested across digital infrastructure, renewable power and semiconductor manufacturing globally, has emerged as a leading investor.
The company plans to invest €20bn (US$20.9bn) over the next five years to develop data centres and AI infrastructure in France. Brookfield has allocated €15bn (US$15.7bn) to data centres, which will be led by its portfolio company Data4, one of Europe’s largest data centre developers headquartered in Paris.
Accelerating AI ambitions
Announcing Brookfield’s investment when hosting the AI Summit, Macron said: “The €20bn investment by Brookfield, notably through Data4, will allow France to remain in the race alongside major AI players. This investment demonstrates France’s attractiveness.
“We have the knowledge, the talents, and the decarbonised energy needed to accelerate in AI. We must not slow down, the world is accelerating. This is a battle for independence."
Brookfield’s total €20bn investment is projected to be delivered by 2030. Specifically on data centre development, Data4 has existing plans to build more than 500 MW of data centre capacity across several regions of France – the latest announcement will enable it to potentially triple that figure making France the single largest market Data4 serves.
The company operates some of the most powerful facilities in Europe, including in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Germany and Greece.
It uses a model based on efficient, scalable and AI-ready data centre campuses. It says this approach, which is unique in Europe, is designed specifically to meet the growing power and cooling needs of AI-based systems. It also enables even the most intensive workloads required for AI model training and inference while maximising energy efficiency.
“In France, data centres are now a crucial pillar of the country’s digitisation,” says Alexandre Delaval, Country Managing Director France at Data4. “Since 2018, this industry has grown seven times faster than the national economy. The data centre industry is not a mere player in the shadows anymore, but a real engine for economic growth and job creation.”
Brookfield leading tech investment and collaboration
Brookfield’s remaining €5bn investment will be put towards developing AI infrastructure projects across France, including around chip storage, energy generation and data transfer.
Sikander Rashid, Head of Europe at Brookfield says: “We believe France has the potential to play a pivotal role in the global advancement of AI. To achieve European leadership, it is essential to invest proactively in the infrastructure that powers AI services, particularly in data and associated infrastructure.
“Our €20 billion investment programme represents a significant step toward this ambition, laying the foundation for France to compete on the global stage. We are excited to collaborate with stakeholders across France and are looking to expand our investment in data centres to an even greater scale in the future.”
Brookfield has been active in France since 2015 with a portfolio of investments that includes digital and renewable infrastructure, logistics and residential decarbonisation. Globally, it works across renewable power and transition, infrastructure, real estate and private equity, and works with some of the world’s largest technology companies.
In 2024, Brookfield and Microsoft announced the largest ever renewable power supply deal to contribute to Microsoft’s goal of having 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, matched by zero-carbon energy purchases by 2030.
The first-of-its-kind global framework agreement set out a five-year plan for the development of over 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity, almost eight times larger than the largest single corporate power purchase agreement ever signed.
In 2022, Brookfield entered into a US$30bn partnership with Intel for the development of the US tech company’s state-of-the-art semiconductor factory in Arizona.
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