Why Leaders Like Modi & Macron Are Bidding for AI Investment

Political leaders are directly engaging with leading technology executives to secure major investment and large infrastructure projects, with the head of states personally spearheading strategies to lock in computing power and capital.

French President Emmanuel Macron has placed AI infrastructure at the centre of the economic strategy of France. He recently hosted AI firm leaders at the G7 summit in June 2026.

Additionally, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, last week, thanking the retail leader for his record US$48bn investment into India, of which US$21bn will go towards the country’s AI and cloud infrastructure.

Modi also met with several other tech leaders in the previous year, such as Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to discuss similar AI investment plans for India’s economy.

France seeks €75bn boost for data centres 

The French President personally asked Masayoshi Son, SoftBank CEO, to invest billions of dollars into the data centre strategy of the country. Following this, the company announced plans to build 3.1GW of AI data centre infrastructure by 2031.

This project forms part of a €75bn (US$81bn) investment programme. The programme aims to establish 5GW of French AI data centre capacity.

Speaking with Masayoshi, Emmanuel highlighted the existing power capacity of France, which receives a large portion of its electricity from nuclear energy. He committed to securing 3GW of power for the country instead of the 2GW which he initially floated.

Masayoshi explains that the government of Emmanuel is very supportive. Masayoshi says: “France and SoftBank’s teams work in collaboration very well.”

Emmanuel also invited several tech leaders to a working lunch with other world leaders at the G7 conference, which France hosted. US President Donald Trump was also present at the conference.

Major tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis were all present at the conference.

Also in attendance were Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, Synthesia’s Victor Riparbelli and Black Forest Labs’ Robin Rombach.

India targets global tech partnerships

On the other side of the world, Modi has made securing investments and global partnerships a key goal in his economic growth strategies. Earlier this year, he hosted several top tech leaders at the India AI Impact Summit.

The summit resulted in several billion-dollar tech investments for the country. India does not currently manufacture AI-ready chips or any kind of US- or China-level AI model.

The country lags behind amid the AI boom because it lacks these two aspects. India largely relies on foreign AI models and computing hardware, which limits its AI ambitions.

Narendra has sought to attract capital and technology investment to counter this limitation. He is encouraging local companies to develop semiconductors.

The government is also offering government-backed long-term tax breaks to AI hyperscalers, which were discussed with Amazon’s Andy recently.

Narendra thanked the retail leader for his record US$48bn investment into India. Amazon is a company which will direct US$21bn of this total towards the AI and cloud infrastructure of the country.

Prior to the AI summit, India secured the largest investment in Asia from Microsoft. The investment will help establish sovereign infrastructure for India.

Google also announced a US$15bn investment into the country to create the largest AI hub in the world. Prime Minister Modi met with several other tech leaders in the previous year to discuss similar AI investment plans.

These leaders included Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Modi explained his integration plans at the summit.

“India does not see fear in AI. India sees fortune in AI. India sees the future in AI," he said.