Artificial intelligence: 35 “ready-to-use” sites in France for data centers, government announces

Thirty-five sites are "ready to use" in France to host data centers for artificial intelligence, a technology that consumes a lot of data, announced on Thursday, February 6, the Minister responsible for AI, Clara Chappaz, following an interministerial committee chaired by François Bayrou.

These sites will occupy some 1.200 hectares in total, and their locations will be revealed at the World AI Summit in Paris next week.

"To do artificial intelligence, you need to have access to computing infrastructure" and "we have listed 35 ready-to-use sites to install computing capacity," explained Ms. Chappaz.

President Emmanuel Macron will discuss some of the "major infrastructure projects" at the summit.

These sites will occupy areas ranging from 18 to 150 hectares and will be able to be connected to the electricity network for a "high" capacity from 2027. France has around 250 data centers, compared to 2.000 in the United States.

Faced with the United States and China, France wants to emerge as a major power in generative AI (capable of generating text or image data) and sound a "European awakening" with this summit which is to bring together a myriad of players in the sector in Paris.

France has invested 2,5 billion euros since 2018 in a national strategy for AI that it intends to "accelerate today", stressed Ms. Chappaz.

The government has thus invested 360 million euros over five years - via the France 2030 plan - in "AI clusters" to support French talent, in research and training, in nine specialized centers of excellence. The objective is to have 100.000 people trained in AI by 2030.

It will also renew in 2025 an investment of 400 million euros in the AI ecosystem, which will be supplemented during the summit by announcements of investments from European funds and large groups.

The Prime Minister also intends to "deploy" AI in the civil service. In this regard, he has launched "a call for expressions of interest" for the first quarter of 2025 in order to "identify AI solutions for the public sector", with a "referencing system" for companies.

The 5,7 million public sector employees will thus benefit from conversational software similar to ChatGPT, the Ministry of Civil Service announced on Thursday.

Faced with the concern raised by this technology, Ms Chappaz explained that AI was "a tool that allows us to save time, to carry out a certain number of complex tasks" but also "to reinvest this time in services, in people".

AI makes it possible to "gain productivity points" and even "contribute to budgetary recovery", it is also argued at Matignon.

The government will nevertheless remain "very vigilant" in matters of digital "sovereignty", the same source specifies, while Australia has decided to ban the use of AI programs from the Chinese start-up DeepSeek on government devices in the face of a security "risk" deemed "unacceptable".

This “public transformation” with AI must be able to “carry our ecosystem,” stressed Ms. Chappaz.

More than 1.000 French start-ups are currently working in AI.