French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a significant investment of $109 billion in the artificial intelligence industry, with the aim of strengthening the country's and Europe's positions in global technological competition.
According to the Financial Times, part of the funding will be provided by international partners. The United Arab Emirates will invest $50 billion in the construction of large server complexes. Canada's Brookfield will invest $20 billion in the development of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The Current AI fund will also be created with an initial capital of $400 million and a plan to raise $2.5 billion over five years to develop “socially beneficial artificial intelligence”.
Venture company General Catalyst is leading a large investment group that intends to spend $150 billion on deploying artificial intelligence in companies, investing in European AI startups and building critical infrastructure in the region.
EU AI Champions Initiative
The initiative aims to make Europe a leader in AI. Private equity and venture capitalists such as KKR, Blackstone, EQT, CVC and DST Global are also participating.
The plan is backed by more than 60 European companies, including German carmaker Volkswagen and Swedish music streaming service Spotify. They are pledging to accelerate and deploy AI, but are not committing to specific spending on the technology.
The companies are also calling for simplified regulation of AI in the EU. Proposals on this issue are planned to be presented to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
At the AI Action Summit in Paris, which will bring together world leaders and heads of technology companies, Macron, together with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will call for the creation of more “open” artificial intelligence platforms, in contrast to the closed systems of OpenAI and Google.