Masayoshi Son arrived at the Palace of Versailles with a number that eclipsed everything else on the table. SoftBank's €75 billion commitment to build AI data centres in France over five years is not just the centrepiece of Emmanuel Macron's annual Choose France investment summit — it is the largest single foreign direct investment pledge in French history, and one of the largest AI infrastructure commitments placed by a single company anywhere in the world.
The investment covers large-scale AI computing facilities across France, including sites outside Paris designed to handle the immense power demands of next-generation AI model training and inference. SoftBank's plan targets five gigawatts of dedicated AI power capacity by 2030 — roughly equivalent to five nuclear reactors running at full output.
The deal is also a personal one. Masayoshi Son and Emmanuel Macron have built a working relationship over several years, with Macron consistently positioning France as the preferred European destination for hyperscale AI investment. Son has announced major AI infrastructure commitments in the United States and Japan, but the French pledge is larger than both — a clear signal that France's pitch is landing where it matters.
For SoftBank, the investment reflects a conviction that AI infrastructure — the data centres, energy contracts, and high-speed networks that underpin large-scale model development — is the defining industrial asset of the next technology cycle. France's nuclear-heavy electricity grid, which gives it among the lowest carbon-intensity power in Europe, is central to the economics.
The SoftBank deal anchored a broader Choose France sweep. Total investment commitments at the summit exceeded €110 billion, with additional pledges from Microsoft, Google, and several European industrial groups. French officials projected the commitments would create or sustain more than 50,000 jobs. Choose France has become a reliable annual benchmark for France's foreign investment climate: last year's edition drew €15 billion in pledges; this year's total is more than seven times that, driven almost entirely by AI infrastructure.
France is positioning itself as Europe's AI landlord — the country where the physical infrastructure of the next industrial wave gets built. The €75 billion SoftBank commitment is the largest single endorsement that pitch has received. The open question is execution: SoftBank has a history of ambitious pledges that take years to translate into concrete construction. French officials privately expect the real build-out to begin in 2027 once planning, grid connections, and financing structures are in place. The number is real. The timeline is the variable. But France has clearly secured its place at the front of the European queue.
