France’s AI Infrastructure Push Draws Foxconn, Nvidia and a New Wave of European Investment

Paris is becoming a central stage for Europe’s artificial intelligence ambitions as VivaTech draws major technology companies looking to expand AI infrastructure across the continent.

What began as a 45,000-person technology gathering has grown into Europe’s largest startup and tech conference, attracting more than 200,000 visitors from 170 countries. This year, the agenda is shaped heavily by AI sovereignty, data centre capacity and the infrastructure needed to support the technology.

Taiwanese manufacturing group Foxconn and French computing company Bull announced a partnership on Thursday to build advanced AI computers in Europe. The systems are intended to support the continent’s expanding network of “AI factories,” large-scale computing centres that provide the processing power behind artificial intelligence services.

Foxconn vice president and spokesperson James Wu told Euronews Next that France offers a strong mix of technical talent, industrial expertise and ambition in advanced technology, including aerospace and high-tech manufacturing.

“France has very clear ambitions for AI, and we believe we can play an important role in helping the country achieve them,” Wu said.

Under the agreement, components will be produced and tested at Foxconn facilities in the Czech Republic before final assembly and validation at Bull’s factory in Angers, France. The servers are aimed at cloud providers and AI factory operators across Europe.

The announcement was made at VivaTech in Paris, marking Foxconn’s first appearance at the event.

Besides unveiling the Nvidia-powered AI servers, Foxconn also displayed two electric vehicles, including one fitted with a massage chair, and a wheeled humanoid robot designed for precision assembly work.

The Foxconn-Bull partnership is part of a broader wave of AI infrastructure investment in Europe, much of it linked to Nvidia.

At last year’s VivaTech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company planned to help build more than 20 AI factories across Europe and identified Mistral AI as a leading champion of sovereign computing on the continent.

This year, Nvidia and Mistral AI announced Mistral Compute, a project to create sovereign AI infrastructure and a GPU cloud platform designed specifically for European users.

What makes France attractive to AI infrastructure investors

Under President Emmanuel Macron, France has worked to position itself as a “startup nation” and a serious player in the global AI race.

One of its key advantages is energy. France relies heavily on nuclear power, which can provide relatively stable and lower-cost electricity for energy-intensive data centres.

Wu said reliable power is fundamental to AI computing capacity and that France’s energy mix gives it a competitive edge.

“For advanced economies seeking to meet the energy demands of the AI era, France has a very strong advantage,” he said, adding that the country also shows a clear determination to develop its AI industry.

Foxconn is also looking beyond server racks. The company sees potential to strengthen France’s wider AI ecosystem, including electric vehicles, smartphones and PCs, all of which increasingly rely on embedded AI technology.

While Foxconn focuses on AI factory infrastructure, Nvidia supplies the latest AI chips that power many of these systems.

Huang has described AI as a five-layer structure made up of energy, chips, infrastructure, data centre servers, and AI models and applications.

Nat Ives, Nvidia’s director of enterprise for Benelux, France and Nordics, said the company is working to help all those layers develop together.

He said France is especially well placed because it has EDF, the state-owned electric utility company, as well as nuclear and renewable power capacity.

“When companies decide where to locate data centres and negotiate access to computing capacity, sustainability and carbon impact are now major factors,” Ives said.

Those decisions are increasingly influenced by Nvidia’s own environmental commitments. The company says its global offices and data centres are powered by renewable electricity.

Nvidia also says its latest Blackwell chip architecture can reduce energy consumption for AI tasks by up to 25 times compared with the previous generation.

France’s growing group of AI companies is another draw. Ives pointed to firms including Mistral AI, AMI and H Company, as well as software providers and developers supported by strong university talent pipelines.

“European model builders have a major role to play,” Ives said. “I have followed Mistral from its earliest days, and we have worked with the team throughout its development.”

Companies that embrace open-source and open-science models can also help widen access to AI for organisations and developers that cannot afford closed systems from larger providers.

“We have collaborated with and supported these efforts from the beginning because open source and open science are essential for creating real choice in the market,” Ives said.

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