This week, the AI Action Summit is taking place in Paris, and the European Union is using it as an opportunity to dive deep into the growing sector. The bloc has announced that it will allocate 200 billion euros ($206 billion) for the development of artificial intelligence. This amount includes €20 billion ($20.6 billion) for AI gigafactories that process and train large models.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the plan, dubbed InvestAI, at the AI Action Summit on Tuesday. She defended the position that Europe is not late in competing with China and the US. “The frontier is constantly moving, leadership is still up for grabs, and there is a whole world of AI adoption behind it,” von der Leyen said. “Bringing AI into industry applications and harnessing its power to increase productivity and improve people’s lives is where Europe can truly lead the race.”
The news comes after France announced that private investment in the AI ecosystem is worth 109 billion euros ($112.5 billion). The country is also dedicating a gigawatt of nuclear power to an artificial intelligence project led by FluidStack. It will use chips manufactured by Nvidia.
January was an important month for AI development in the US and China. In the United States, OpenAI and SoftBank announced a $500 billion partnership called Stargate to build an AI infrastructure. Then, the Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek exploded on the world stage, claiming to offer the same quality as its competitors but at a much lower cost.
