French President Emmanuel Macron used the gilded setting of the Palace of Versailles on June 1, 2026, to unveil what his office called a record wave of foreign investment—€93 billion (about $100.4 billion) spread across 71 announcements.
Macron said the projects would create “more than 15,000 jobs,” and argued they would make France “by far the leading country hosting data centers” and “computing capacity in Europe.” The splashiest pledge came from Japan’s SoftBank, whose planned buildout of massive AI-focused data centers is now central to the summit’s message—and to the questions it leaves behind.
SoftBank’s €75 billion bet puts mega data centers at the center of Macron’s pitch
The most striking commitment at this year’s Choose France summit was SoftBank’s €75 billion investment (about $81.0 billion), described as the largest of its kind in Europe.
Three giant data-center sites are planned, including one in partnership with French startup Sesterce. Each site is slated for 1 gigawatt of power capacity, with locations cited as Dunkirk and Bouchain, plus a third site. For scale, the article notes that France’s total already-installed data-center capacity stands at 1.3 GW, while the Flamanville EPR nuclear reactor produces 1.6 GW. Schneider Electric is set to serve as SoftBank’s industrial partner on the projects.
Carbon’s liquidation highlights the limits of the reindustrialization story
Even as Macron celebrated the Versailles announcements, one company that had become a familiar face at the summit was missing: Carbon, a Lyon-based solar-panel startup founded in 2022 that had been invited to the previous three editions in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
On May 19, Carbon said it was abandoning its planned giant factory project in Fos-sur-Mer, citing insufficient financing—its needs exceeded €1 billion (about $1.1 billion)—and what it described as a lack of real willingness by the European Union to protect the photovoltaic market from Chinese competition. The company is now in court-ordered liquidation.
Carbon is not presented as an isolated case. The reindustrialization push that Choose France is meant to embody is showing its limits, the article argues, pointing to the Disneyland Paris project: an investment of €2 billion (about $2.2 billion) announced with fanfare at the 2018 edition that took years to materialize.
Energy strain and the fear France becomes an “electricity subcontractor”
Concentrating gigawatts of power on ultra-capital-intensive uses like hyperscale data centers can tighten electricity supply for households and businesses, the article says—an issue it calls a blind spot of the summit.
The concern is strategic as well as economic: if France supplies the energy while U.S. hyperscalers supply the chips and algorithms, the country could end up as an “energy subcontractor,” building giant warehouse-like facilities that enrich foreign interests. SoftBank, the article notes, remains vague about the ultimate end users of its French infrastructure.
In that debate, Arthur Mensch is cited as estimating a two-year window to invest massively and structure European AI demand. But the article says that demand remains unclear, held back by weak public procurement and companies struggling to anticipate their needs. France could win data centers yet lose the AI race if its nuclear power does not also feed European champions.
After years of “start-up nation” politics, the tech sector watches what comes next
Since 2017, the French tech sector has grown in Macron’s political orbit. The “start-up nation” label, the article argues, was more than a slogan—backed by public financing, international visibility, and an economic doctrine.
With Macron’s future beyond this cycle hanging over the event—described as potentially his last Choose France of this kind—the article says whatever comes after him opens a period of uncertainty that the sector is watching closely.
