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Macron Courts AI Investment at France's G7; SoftBank Pledges Up to €75bn

June 15, 2026 at 00:45 EDT

Infra & Chips
Policy & Regulation
Funding & M&A

At the G7 summit France's Emmanuel Macron will host on June 15-17 in Évian-les-Bains, AI infrastructure and European technological sovereignty are set as central agenda items. Macron is inviting US tech executives including OpenAI's Sam Altman to pitch France as Europe's AI hub.

June 15–17, 2026 · 52nd G7 Summit · Évian-les-Bains

Macron Puts AI Governance & Child Safety at the Heart of the G7

France's president invites Sam Altman and other frontier-AI leaders to the summit he chairs — staging Europe's "third way" on AI sovereignty and the online protection of minors.

€109B

Private AI investment over 5 years, announced Feb 2025

52nd

G7 Leaders Summit, chaired by France

Leading AI firms invited to the AI & safety sessions

Europe's AI bet — €109B compute & talent push

Stacked toward sovereign infrastructure: data centers, compute capacity and talent over five years.

€109B

French AI investment

1×

single-year baseline

Who is at the table

Sam Altman · OpenAI Anthropic Google Mistral AI

A first G7 leaders' appearance for Altman. Non-G7 leaders, including India's Narendra Modi, are invited to some sessions.

Roadmap to the summit — "trustworthy AI & digital for citizens"

Jun 1 · Digital Ministers agree roadmap

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AI governance & child protection on agenda

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Jun 15–17 · Leaders Summit, Évian

The European pitch

A "third way" avoiding dependence on the US and China, with Mistral AI cast as Europe's only LLM able to rival both.

The tension

US voices call the EU AI Act excessive — leaving Macron to balance regulation against innovation on the world stage.

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