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Masayoshi Son made the announcement at the 2026 Choose France summit in Paris, hosted by President Emmanuel Macron. The commitment is SoftBank’s largest AI infrastructure investment in Europe and one of the largest single-country AI infrastructure pledges globally.

Key Numbers

• Total commitment: up to €75 billion
• Target capacity: 5 GW
• First phase: €45 billion, 3.1 GW in Hauts-de-France, delivery by 2031
• Sites: Dunkirk (Loon-Plage), Bosquel, Bouchain
• Sesterce joint venture: 1 GW in Bosquel, selected via competitive process
• Partners: EDF (Bouchain), Schneider Electric (Dunkirk manufacturing plant), SB Energy

Three Sites, Three Partners

The Hauts-de-France cluster covers three distinct locations. Dunkirk is anchored by a Schneider Electric robotised manufacturing plant — extending the commitment beyond compute operations into AI hardware supply chain localisation. Bouchain is a dedicated EDF project, drawing on France’s nuclear grid capacity. Bosquel is a 1 GW joint venture with Sesterce, a French data center operator, positioned for low-latency access to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Frankfurt.

Son’s rationale was explicit: France’s access to a reliable, low-carbon electrical grid is the decisive industrial advantage. At this scale, AI data centers are power infrastructure problems first. Nuclear-backed base load provides the dependable capacity that most European markets cannot guarantee, and the government’s fast-track permitting process was cited by France’s Minister of Economy Roland Lescure as a deliberate competitive feature.

SoftBank’s Infrastructure Thesis Reaches Europe

SoftBank has made AI infrastructure commitments in Japan (sovereign AI GPU cloud, Infrinia OS), the US (Stargate co-investment), and robotics (the Roze spinout). The France pledge is the first European anchor at this scale.

Son’s framing: “The countries that build the infrastructure for this transformation will shape the future of technology, industry and society.” That language mirrors the tone of the US Stargate announcement — infrastructure as geopolitical positioning, not just commercial capex.

At €75 billion over the full commitment period, the figure is larger than Amazon’s entire annual AI capex run rate directed at a single national market.

Choose France and European Sovereignty

The announcement lands during the Choose France 2026 summit, which has attracted a range of hyperscaler and infrastructure commitments targeting Macron’s EU digital sovereignty agenda. France’s pitch is built on three assets: nuclear electricity, industrial workforce, and accelerated government approvals. SoftBank’s partners — EDF as the grid anchor, Schneider Electric for hardware manufacturing — embed the commitment into French industrial policy rather than treating it as a foreign infrastructure import.

Roland Lescure, Minister of Economy, Finance, and Digital Sovereignty, specifically called out the Schneider Electric manufacturing plant at Dunkirk as evidence of “long-term commitment to building the future of an industry-centric AI in France” — language that goes well beyond data center leasing.

Whether SoftBank executes on €75 billion over the full timeline will depend on GPU supply chains, demand growth, and Son’s track record of large commitments that sometimes compress. The first phase commitment of €45 billion for 3.1 GW by 2031 is the binding near-term figure.