Nvidia and Abu Dhabi's investment fund MGX are planning a gigantic AI data center near Paris. It is a billion-euro project that underlines France's tech ambitions.
(Luisa Bomke
19.05.2025 - 18:13)
Düsseldorf. The US chip manufacturer Nvidia and the investment fund MGX from Abu Dhabi want to build what they claim to be Europe's largest campus for AI data centers near Paris together with French partners. The joint project is intended to advance French and Emirati ambitions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), as the companies announced in a joint statement at the "Choose France" summit.
While Germany has been rather hesitant in recent years, France wants to position itself as a leading AI location and is seeking to attract financially strong investors worldwide. The summit is a regular opportunity for French President Emmanuel Macron to announce major investments.
A major joint project is at the heart of the new joint ventures: Nvidia, the French AI flagship company Mistral AI, the state development bank Bpifrance and the Abu Dhabi investment fund MGX, which specializes in technology, want to build a data center with a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts.
The significance of this announcement becomes clear when you convert the size of the data center. 1.4 gigawatts is equivalent to the power requirements of a medium-sized city - a gigantic size for a data center. Previous European data centers are usually much smaller. Construction of the AI campus is due to start this year and the servers should be online by the end of 2027.
According to Mistral, the AI Campus will support the entire AI lifecycle - from model training and inference to applications in critical sectors such as healthcare, energy, mobility, finance and manufacturing.
On the way to becoming an AI nation: France strengthens its partnership with the UAE
Also involved in the project are the construction group Bouygues, the energy supplier EDF and the elite École Polytechnique, which is already working with the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.
The initiative is the result of broader cooperation agreements in the field of AI, which were reached in February during a visit by the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to French President Macron. At the time, Bloomberg reported that the talks also included Emirati plans to invest up to 50 billion euros (56.4 billion US dollars) in French data centers.
According to a separate statement from Macron's office, the investment volume for the data center campus amounts to 8.5 billion euros.
The agreement combines the UAE's ambition to diversify its economy from oil and expand its political influence with the French goal of creating a so-called "AI sovereignty" of Europe. Macron had previously announced investments of 109 billion euros in AI infrastructure in order to keep up with global competition from the USA and China. Macron announced a national AI strategy back in 2018. The billions in investment are part of a comprehensive industrial plan.
MGX has previously supported OpenAI and xAI and is one of the investors behind the 500 billion dollar AI investment program "Stargate" announced by US President Donald Trump.H+ MGX is led by one of the world's most influential dealmakers - Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also Chairman of the Emirati tech group G42. Together with OpenAI, G42 will build a five-gigawatt data center in the UAE.
With agency material from Bloomberg.
