🔴 Potemkin Sovereignty or a New Era for French AI?

The amount is dizzying: €109 billion.

A sum like that sets you dreaming for a country facing an economic crisis, but also a major political crisis. But AI also means Elon Musk, the most powerful person in the world, who is determined to see the far right win the next elections in Germany and certainly in France.

By announcing, without specifying how or why, the participation of the United Arab Emirates in this massive investment (a country that, as we explained in a previous newsletter, is betting on France to strengthen its geopolitical position against the United States), Emmanuel Macron risks handing a political victory to the French far right.

I am not privy to the figures or the strategic decisions, but it is obvious that a move like this will seriously destabilize some established players in French tech, such as OVH and Scaleway.

We are currently witnessing a data center bubble.

A large part of the money announced will be invested in acquiring infrastructure, without necessarily translating into quality jobs in France.

The situation recalls North Carolina when Apple set up its data centers there: lots of hope, only to find that the "good paying jobs" were monopolized by engineers brought in from elsewhere, while local jobs were limited to low-paid security guard positions.

The crucial question, then, is what share of this investment will actually be injected into the real economy. The chips will be produced by Nvidia, the software developed in the United States.

We will mainly be buying foreign services and platforms, paid for with foreign investment.

Admittedly, a small portion of these funds will go to researchers' salaries, but fundamentally, the current strategy seems to turn France into a mere technology hub, rather than the final destination of the value added.

There is, however, one real winner from these announcements: Mistral, which, like Doctolib during Covid, benefited from free publicity from the President of the Republic and a social media campaign presenting the company as the "patriotic" choice.

But the question about Mistral remains.