SoftBank plans to invest €45 billion in artificial intelligence data centers in France over the next seven years, marking one of the largest single-country commitments to AI infrastructure from a foreign investor. The Japanese conglomerate aims to have the facilities operational by 2031, according to the company's announcement.
The scale of the commitment
The €45 billion figure is roughly $49 billion at current exchange rates. SoftBank said the investment will target AI-specific data centers, not general cloud or enterprise facilities. The company did not disclose precise locations within France or a timeline for construction phases, but indicated the build-out would proceed in stages through 2031.
For context, France's entire data center market was valued at about €3.5 billion in 2023, according to industry estimates—though the company did not cite that figure. The SoftBank pledge alone would dwarf that existing market size, a signal of how aggressively the conglomerate is betting on AI workloads requiring massive compute capacity.
Why France
France has been positioning itself as a European hub for AI and cloud infrastructure, offering competitive energy prices from its nuclear-heavy grid and tax incentives for green data centers. SoftBank's decision to concentrate such a large sum there suggests the country's pitch is drawing serious capital. The company did not name any French government incentives tied to the investment, but said it expects the facilities to create thousands of construction and long-term operational jobs.
The investment also aligns with SoftBank's broader pivot toward AI. The firm has poured billions into Arm Holdings and various AI startups through its Vision Fund, but this is its largest direct infrastructure play in Europe. By locking in a long-term data center footprint in France, SoftBank gains proximity to European customers who want AI compute without crossing the Atlantic.
Unanswered questions
SoftBank did not specify how much of the €45 billion will come from its own balance sheet versus debt or outside partners. The company also left open whether any of the data centers would be co-developed with local operators or remain wholly owned. French regulators have not yet commented on the plan, and no permitting timeline has been shared.
The first concrete milestone will likely be site selection, which SoftBank said is underway but declined to detail. Without a specific location, local permitting and grid connection timelines remain unknown. That makes 2031 an ambitious target for a project that, if built as described, would be one of the largest AI data center campuses in Europe.
