France’s energy edge gives AI advantage if preserved
▼ Summary
– France’s cheap, low-carbon electricity is a strategic asset for AI, but a debate has emerged over whether to reserve it for European firms or sell it to American tech giants building data centres in France.
– Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch argues that France risks squandering its power surplus by selling it cheaply to Americans, who would then resell AI services at a higher price, instead of using it to develop European AI.
– The scale of demand is highlighted by SoftBank’s planned supercomputer in northern France, which will require 3-5 gigawatts, far exceeding the current one gigawatt allocated to all data centres in the country.
– Some French officials, including Bpifrance’s Nicolas Dufourcq, advocate reserving around 20% of electricity capacity for European players, while state utility EDF has already favoured domestic bidders in initial allocations.
– Opponents of reserving power, like Schneider Electric’s Hélène Macela, argue that foreign data centres create broader ecosystem jobs and that France must act quickly to secure investment or risk losing it to other countries.
France’s cheap, low-carbon electricity is a strategic asset Europe has largely overlooked in the race for artificial intelligence dominance. Now, a heated debate is unfolding over how that power should be allocated: should it be reserved for homegrown AI startups, or sold to American tech giants building massive data centres on French soil?
When the head of Europe’s largest AI lab arrived at the G7 working lunch on artificial intelligence last month, his message was not about algorithms or models. It was about electricity. Arthur Mensch, chief executive of Mistral AI, addressed the room on June 17, speaking directly to an audience that included Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen, and the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI.
Mensch’s argument is straightforward. Training and running AI systems consumes enormous amounts of power, and France, with its fleet of nuclear reactors, enjoys a surplus. “Electricity is the primary substrate,” he said. “You have to control the infrastructure, and Europe is relatively well-positioned.” The danger, he warned, is selling that power too cheaply to foreign firms. “Either you sell that to Americans, who will resell it 10 times more expensively in the form of artificial intelligence, or you transform it yourself.”
The scale of the demand makes the question urgent. A single supercomputer that SoftBank plans to build in northern France is expected to draw between 3 and 5 gigawatts. That figure, announced at the Choose France summit in late May, dwarfs the total capacity currently allocated to every data centre in the country, which sits under one gigawatt.
Global AI firms are racing to expand their computing capacity, and France, facing deindustrialisation, has courted them aggressively. Its 2025 AI Summit generated pledges worth 109 billion euros, mostly from foreign investors, under Macron’s slogan “Plug, baby, plug!”
Mensch’s intervention has sharpened a debate already simmering among officials. Some want a portion of France’s electricity ringfenced for European players. Nicolas Dufourcq, head of the state investment bank Bpifrance, said he could imagine reserving around 20 percent of capacity for domestic firms. The state utility EDF, which is selling its surplus power and offering land, has already favoured local bidders in its first allocations. Three of four contracts went to French companies Eclairion, Mistral and OpCore. The fourth is expected to go to SoftBank. The push for European-owned infrastructure is part of a wider argument about who captures the value AI creates.
The issue has entered the 2027 presidential campaign, with candidates from several parties backing some form of preferential access. Yet the stance is not without complications. Mistral, the national champion at the centre of the sovereignty case, is itself building an “AI Campus”. Investors including the Emirati fund MGX, Nvidia and Bpifrance are putting in 30 to 50 billion euros. Homegrown ambition, in practice, still leans on foreign capital.
Other French voices warn against shutting the door. Hélène Macela, a vice-president at Schneider Electric, argued that a data centre brings more than its own headcount. “A data center is like an ultra-digitalised factory,” she said. “It is not a reservoir of jobs in itself, but you have to look at the entire ecosystem around it: construction workers, installers, equipment suppliers, technicians, security personnel.” Her firm plans to build a factory alongside SoftBank’s data centre. Better to host these projects in France, she suggested, than watch them go elsewhere.
Guillaume Basset, deputy chief executive of Business France, took a similarly pragmatic line. “It’s a race against the clock,” he said. “When the train passes, it won’t come by twice.” Foreign firms, he added, tend to concentrate their investment in a single country, which raises the cost of turning them away.
The argument reaches beyond France. Across Europe, governments are weighing how to turn energy and grid capacity into an AI advantage rather than an export. France holds one of the continent’s strongest hands: abundant, low-carbon, comparatively cheap power. What it has not yet settled is who gets to plug into it, and on what terms. As Macron courts investment from around the world, that is the question now dividing Paris.
(Source: The Next Web)