SoftBank pledges €75 billion for French AI

Seventy-five billion euros. That's how much Japan's SoftBank pledged to pour into AI data centers across northern France, announced at the Choose France summit at Versailles. If delivered, it would be the largest single AI infrastructure deal signed in Europe, dwarfing the cumulative €87 billion that all nine Choose France summits have attracted since 2018. Whether the man behind the pledge can deliver is a different question.

What 5 Gigawatts Actually Means

The deal's centrepiece is 5 gigawatts of data center capacity. Five gigawatts running around the clock equals roughly half the peak electricity demand of Belgium. All of it dedicated to training and running AI models.

France currently has just 1.5 GW of installed data center capacity. SoftBank would quadruple that. Phase one, worth €45 billion, targets 3.1 GW across three northern French sites by 2031: Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain, where EDF is converting a decommissioned thermal plant into a data center site. Schneider Electric will build a roboticised factory at Dunkirk's port to manufacture power modules locally.

AI data centers are voracious electricity consumers, and France sits on something most European neighbours lack: dozens of nuclear reactors producing constant, weather-independent power. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son put it plainly: "The fact that the country is an energy producer and exporter is absolutely crucial for infrastructure investments in artificial intelligence."

Ireland shows what happens without that advantage. Irish data centers now consume 22% of national electricity, more than all urban households combined, and new grid connections are frozen until 2028. Across Europe's most desirable data center locations, waiting times stretch to 7-13 years. Energy policy has become AI policy.

The Man Who Lost WeWork and Sold Nvidia

SoftBank's track record makes this a volatile bet. The Vision Fund lost $32 billion after backing WeWork, whose $47 billion valuation collapsed before the company reached public markets. SoftBank also once owned 4.9% of Nvidia at $4 per share, then sold the entire stake in 2019 to cover losses. That holding would be worth roughly $40 billion today.

Son recovered through a single enormous wager. SoftBank invested over $30 billion in OpenAI, and in fiscal year 2026 the Vision Fund posted $46 billion in gains, with 92% tied to OpenAI's rising valuation. S&P downgraded SoftBank's credit outlook to negative, warning that such concentration could weaken financial flexibility. If OpenAI's valuation dips, the money behind France's data centers gets thinner.

Son's pledge history fits the pattern. In 2016, he promised tens of billions in US investment to the incoming Trump administration, channelled through the Vision Fund before it imploded. The language this time is careful: "up to" €75 billion, "commitment to develop," with phase two still lacking locations or timelines.

Seed Money vs. the Global Arms Race

The deal exposes a structural European gap. Germany, the continent's largest economy, responded to the AI infrastructure race with a €125 million programme for frontier AI labs through its innovation agency SPRIND. SoftBank's phase one alone is 360 times larger.

That gap widens in global context. The four largest US tech companies plan to spend a combined €650 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone. SoftBank's five-year commitment amounts to about 11% of one year of American tech giant spending.

France is betting that nuclear baseload (constant, round-the-clock power that doesn't depend on the weather), fast-tracked permitting, and state-backed land give it a structural edge no neighbour can match. The energy logic is solid. Whether the financial logic holds depends on Son staying solvent, OpenAI staying valuable, and grid connections arriving on schedule. In Europe, that last condition has been the one that breaks first.