SoftBank's €75 Billion Plan to Build AI Computing Centers in France

SoftBank Group, a large Japanese investment company, has announced plans to spend €75 billion (about $87 billion) to build AI data centers in France. The company will construct enough computing capacity to power advanced artificial intelligence systems. This is SoftBank's biggest infrastructure project in Europe to date, and the company announced it at a major economic conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The first phase of the project will cost €45 billion and deliver the ability to run large AI systems across three locations in northern France: Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain. These centers should be operational by 2031.

What These Data Centers Will Do

Data centers are essentially large buildings filled with computers that store information and run calculations. You can think of them as the power plants of the internet — they are where the actual computing happens behind the scenes when you use AI tools, cloud services, or stream video.

SoftBank's centers will be designed specifically for AI. This means they will be built differently than regular data centers. They will need special power systems and cooling setups because AI requires computers to work very intensely and send information between machines at extremely high speeds.

Five gigawatts of total capacity is a large amount by today's standards. To give you a sense of scale: a typical data center uses between 100 and 300 megawatts. SoftBank's plan is roughly equivalent to 15 to 50 conventional data centers, though AI centers pack in more computing power per facility.

Where the Centers Will Be Built

SoftBank chose the Hauts-de-France region in northern France. This area has some advantages: it sits near undersea fiber optic cables that connect Europe to the rest of the world, it has access to reliable electricity from France's nuclear power plants, and the French government is supportive of large technology projects.

One of the sites, in Dunkirk, will do something unusual: it will house both data center operations and manufacturing equipment. SoftBank is partnering with Schneider Electric, a European technology company, to make data center equipment on site rather than importing everything from abroad. This is a way to build more local jobs and supply chains in France.

The Money and Timeline

The full €75 billion will be spent across multiple phases. The first €45 billion will deliver the first phase by 2031. SoftBank has not yet said when the remaining capacity will be completed.

This amount of money is enormous. It is comparable to SoftBank's entire company value. The company has not explained exactly how it will pay for all of this, though SoftBank's leader, Masayoshi Son, has a track record of using loans and selling assets to fund big projects.

Before settling on €75 billion, Son discussed even larger figures with French officials — as much as $100 billion. So the final number appears to be the result of negotiation rather than SoftBank's initial opening offer.

Why This Matters for AI

The broader context here is worth pausing on. SoftBank is betting that AI will keep growing for many years, requiring vast amounts of computing power. The company is not waiting to see if demand exists — it is building the infrastructure first, expecting that companies will need it later. We have seen this pattern before, when cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft built massive data centers years ahead of the time when most businesses actually moved their operations to the cloud. Those companies won it by building infrastructure first and letting demand catch up.

SoftBank appears to be making a similar long-term bet on artificial intelligence.

The investment also signals that SoftBank thinks bottlenecks in AI computing will start to ease. Right now, access to powerful computers for training large AI systems is limited and expensive. If more data centers get built, more researchers and companies could train and use AI. That is a shift that could accelerate AI development across industry and society.

What This Means for France and Europe

France has been working to position itself as a major hub for AI technology in Europe, competing with countries like Ireland and the Netherlands. SoftBank's enormous commitment is a major validation of those efforts and will likely attract more investment from other large technology companies.

The project also shows that European governments and countries are now serious players in the infrastructure competition. For decades, the United States and Asia dominated data center building. Now Europe is attracting major commitments.

In this author's view, the France announcement also reflects something broader: SoftBank's leadership sees AI infrastructure as a multi-decade transformation, not a short-term opportunity. The company is willing to spend unprecedented sums and wait years for returns because it believes the era of advanced AI is still in its early stages.

Whether that belief proves correct will become clear over the next decade.