Paris, June 1 -- SoftBank Group Corp. has announced plans to develop and operate 5 gigawatts (GW) of artificial intelligence (AI) data centre capacity in France, with a total investment of up to Euro 75 billion (USD 87 bn), marking one of the largest AI infrastructure commitments in Europe.

The announcement was made during the 2026 Choose France summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. As part of the first phase, SoftBank will invest an initial EUR45 billion (USD 52.2 bn) to build 3.1 GW of AI data centre capacity in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031.

According to the company, the project aims to support the growing demand for high-performance computing infrastructure required by AI companies, cloud service providers, enterpr...