Data centers, AI, logistics: the ninth Choose France summit, the high mass of foreign investments initiated by Emmanuel Macron, began on June 1, 2026 in the presence of the head ofIN‰tat, with a record harvest of 93 billion euros in announced projects. The President of the Republic arrived around 2:00 p.m. under the gold of the Château de Versailles, where this annual event takes place, before starting bilateral meetings with business leaders and participating in round tables.
“This edition of Choose France alone will make it possible to crystallize a record amount of 93 billion euros of confirmed investments, for more than 15,000 jobs.“, through 71 expected announcements, rejoiced Emmanuel Macron since theIN‰lysed. Alone, this edition exceeds the cumulative investment promises of the previous eight Choose France (“Choose France“), which amounted to 87 billion euros.
“It’s obviously by far a record edition and it’s historic“, added the Head of State while receiving the boss of the Japanese group SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, whose company announced on Saturday a colossal infrastructure project linked to artificial intelligence, which alone represents almost half of the summit’s investments.
The Japanese giant plans, in partnership with the French group Schneider Electric, data centers in Hauts-de-France representing 45 billion euros by 2031, and 75 billion euros over time. “Other sites have been identified” to achieve this objective, indicated Emmanuel Macron.
“Bonne destination”Â
Still in the digital field, Canadian asset manager Brookfield will invest an additional 10 billion euros in AI-related infrastructure in France to reach up to 30 billion in total.
“France is a good destination for artificial intelligence infrastructure“, explained to journalists in Versailles Sikander Rashid, responsible for Euro at Brookfiled Asset Management. The country “benefits from an administration that is very favorable to the development of AI infrastructures. And France has a significant production of nuclear energy“, he added.
The Emirati fund MGX and Bpifrance announce “the imminent selection of a second site“to build AI-related infrastructure, representing”an investment of around 7.5 billion euros“. Other significant investments in the field are also announced by the investment company Ardian and the Nordic data center platform Verne (for 5 billion euros) and the American IT group Salesforce (2 billion dollars by 2030).
These projects will allow “to make France by far the first country hosting data centers (…) and computing capacities in Europe, and to make France also the advanced point in the production of AI robots, industrialization through AI“, welcomed Emmanuel Macron. “We are clearly closing the gap we had in terms of computing capacity in Europe“compared to the United States and China,” he said.
This 9th edition, the last of the president, will also see “strategic projects for our independence in semiconductors, in critical minerals, in the electrification of tractors or trucks, in steel, in health“, he said.
 Industrial “problem”
Created in January 2018 by Emmanuel Macron, shortly after his arrival at the Elysée, Choose France has since been established as the annual meeting emblematic of the pro-business policy of the Head of State. Since the first summit, more than 230 projects have been announced, representing 50,000 new industrial jobs according to Emmanuel Macron.
The 2025 edition of the summit had already broken a record with 20 billion euros of projects announced, and 20.8 billion euros of commitments on AI ratified. Emmanuel Macron sees in these investments “concrete proof of the attractiveness of France” and the fruit of the tax and labor law reforms undertaken since his first mandate, which began in 2017.
For economist Sylvain Bersinger, however, the Versailles announcements “must not hide the fact that total business investment in France is depressed“and that”reindustrialization remains wishful thinking“. Marylise Léon, the number one of the CFDT union, deplored on Public Sénat “a real problem of maintaining the industry in France“.
