SoftBank Group is making a series of bold investments to boost its artificial intelligence (AI) competitiveness. The Japanese conglomerate has now unveiled a plan to invest up to 14 trillion yen (about 132 trillion won) in France to build Europe's largest data center.
According to the Nikkei on the 31st, SoftBank Group plans to spend 8.4 trillion yen (about 79 trillion won) over the next five years in the first phase to build a data center of more than 3 gigawatts (GW) in Dunkirk and Bouscaille in northern France. The final investment is expected to reach 14 trillion yen, with data center capacity projected at 5 GW. SoftBank Group Chairman Masayoshi Son is scheduled to announce the investment plan locally on June 1, in line with "Choose France," a French investment promotion event hosted by the French government.
SoftBank Group will serve as the overall project operator, with its direct investment accounting for only a portion of the total, the Nikkei reported. Servers and AI chips, which are essential for data centers, will be borne by customers such as cloud service providers, while SoftBank Group will raise the necessary funds through project financing and other means. SoftBank Group is also reportedly considering leasing computing resources not only in Japan but also in neighboring countries. In addition, SoftBank Group is preparing the supply chain related to data centers. It plans to partner with Schneider Electric, a major French power company, to establish a new factory for data center power equipment at the port of Dunkirk in the north.
SoftBank Group chose France as its data center site because power is easy to secure there. The Nikkei noted that France covers about 70 percent of its electricity through nuclear power, allowing it to supply power more stably than other European countries, and that data center construction costs are also lower than in the United States.
In its "National AI Strategy" announced in February last year, the French government said it would invest more than 100 billion euros of public and private funds in the AI sector. U.S. Big Tech companies also see France as a promising investment destination. Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest more than 15 billion euros in AI infrastructure development from this year through 2028, while Microsoft (MS) unveiled a 4 billion euro AI-related investment plan in 2024.
