It is a strong signal for the French artificial intelligence sector. On the sidelines of the Choose France summit, Mistral AI, Bpifrance, and the Emirati investment fund MGX announced the expansion of their joint venture Campus AI.
Amount of the operation: an additional €7.5 billion, to raise the total capacity of the infrastructure to 3 gigawatts (GW). That is the equivalent of the power of three nuclear reactors.
The precise allocation of the €7.5 billion among the stakeholders was not specified. It is understood that Mistral AI, the shareholder and primary beneficiary of the platform, will not necessarily use all of the available capacity. A portion of the computing power could be allocated to other actors in the digital sector.
The first phase of the project, the Fouju campus in Seine-et-Marne, already planned 1.4 GW of capacity on a roughly 70-hectare site for a total investment of €35 billion. The second site, locations of which have not yet been fixed, will complement this arrangement, making France the first European destination claimed for “decarbonized AI factories at scale,” according to the partners.
A campus that doubles down
Beneath the announced splash lies a tougher reality. Just a few days ago, Arthur Mensch, cofounder of Mistral, warned a National Assembly committee about the risk of French energy resources being captured by American giants.
“The surplus energy in France is captured by the most powerful players, especially foreign ones. Once supply is monopolized by American actors, there are no other offers,” he argued, urging measures to facilitate the installation of computing capacities for European companies.
Mistral AI, valued at €12 billion, has set the objective of securing 1 GW of its own capacity by 2029. The-scale-up, which is marking its third anniversary, is advancing on several fronts at once: 200 MW secured on the Fouju site, a data center under construction in Sweden for €1.2 billion, and a site in Essonne being developed with the French modular-infrastructure specialist Eclairion, financed by €725 million of debt raised at the end of March from a seven-bank consortium.
“The question now is what France does with every gigawatt it builds,” sums up Thibaud Desfossés, president of Campus AI. “Each gigawatt must generate value in France, not simply pass through.”
