France, UAE to drop €50B on AI mega-datacenter. Still nowhere near America’s $500B bet

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France this week announced plans for a one-gigawatt AI datacenter campus dedicated to advancing development of artificial intelligence. The datacenter project, which will be built in France, was unveiled Thursday evening during a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and UAE …

[Omnipresent]

Be careful of the money guys

Last warning guys. Having your own data warehouses for independence is a good thing, but watch the money! This is how they attacked America. They infiltrated us using data warehouses, and uncontrolled money. They literally bought America. The people that run these data warehouses can, and will, take you down for the money! You guys need your own OS first. Something independent from the US, and more secure.

Take care, Omni.

[Claude Yeller]

Re: Be careful of the money guys

"You guys need your own OS first. Something independent from the US, and more secure."

Who has their own cloud OS? Everyone is running Linux nowadays.

And since when is Linux a US operating system?

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Be careful of the money guys

"us" ?

[Doctor Syntax]

Lemmings. Bloody things get under your feet everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Build your own infrastructure

Most digital live and commerce requires data centers and compute power.

You never want your digital economy dependent on foreign powers. Currently, the US moves in a direction to become as bad as China. Which would leave Europe with only totally untrustworthy options.

Kudos for France for taking serious steps to get their own infrastructure.

[Like a badger]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

Their own infrastructure to do what, though? We've still yet to see any AI nuggets found, although the AI shovel sellers are doing very nicely thank you.

This is FOMO on an international scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FOMO?

Let's see. Within the EU there are 24 official languages spoken and 16+ regional languages. For instance, within Spain there are 4 major languages in daily use.

Current law wants subtitles below every official video broadcast. In several languages if possible.

There is a huge demand of multi-lingual speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech conversion in the EU.

And this is possible today with AI. Meta's SeamlessM4T can even do 96-to-36 language speech-to-speech conversion.

That is just one application of AI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FOMO?

And France itself has more than 400 cheese varieties ... this here AI mega-datacentre will hopefully help sort them out with cheese-to-cheese conversion! (eh-eh-eh!)

[werdsmith]

Re: FOMO?

Add France's 400 cheese varieties to the UK's 700+ named cheeses and a €50 billion data centre starts to look a bit small.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FOMO?

Yeah, well, I think he heard you, and that's why the "Le Prez" here just doubled down on this "quaint" AI datacenter annoucement (as folks in the US are distracted by Super Nacho Cheese and Gulf of American Guacamole Bowl LIX party preps) ... with a brand new €109 billions ($113 billions) funding level!

Let the cheese-to-cheese conversions begin! (ah-ah-ah!)

[ChodeMonkey]

Re: FOMO?

"UK's 700+ named cheeses"

There are roughly 12 main types with about 500 of those 700 being regional, different aged or flavoured versions of those 12. It really isn't a big list.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: FOMO?

Possible ?

Have you actually read the translations ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FOMO?

"Have you actually read the translations ?"

Not of SeamlessM4T, just read their paper. But I have used automatic translation from several sources over the years and they have become quite useful. Even the automatic translation in web browsers.

If you have specific qualms with them, please share them with us.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: FOMO?

Microsoft Team can’t even transcribe properly into 1 language properly…. and that’s after owning Nuance (aka Dragon Dictate) for 3 or so years.

[Justthefacts]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

France will get their own *warehouses* certainly, with thousands of miles of wiring, racks and power supply. But since the compute power is designed by US-based NVidia, manufactured by TSMC, HBM memory manufactured by SK Hynix and Samsung, advanced packaging by SPIL…….Where exactly is France’s value in technology infrastructure?

Meanwhile France’s STMicro in Crolles is slowly dying, year after year, despite the massive semiconductor boom. It was absolutely fine, of course, it had its niche and was profitable with some growth, alongside low risk. And then Useless Ursula came along and decided she would tell them what to do, which was the end of them.

[Khaptain]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

Aren't STMicro an Italian company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

Can anyone build a data center without TSMC? Or Samsung?

There is no country that could go it alone.

But you can have your own data center that runs your own tasks.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

"Most digital live and commerce requires data centers and compute power."

TFA makes it clear. These are not for commerce, they're for AI, the latest precipice for lemmings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

"These are not for commerce, they're for AI, the latest precipice for lemmings."

Latest I heard is that lemmings are doing fine.

AI is a vague concept. It is actually machine learning. But I doubt they would refuse to run engineering workloads for Airbus, ESA (Ariane), or the ITER project. Or refuse jobs from the French military.

GPUs are also well suited for such projects.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

The UAE aren’t exactly trustworthy either. AI-powered oppressive, anyone?

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Build your own infrastructure

Isnt UAE the new hub for criminals around the world ?

[Mentat74]

One Gigawatt ?

What are they trying to do on that campus ? Nuclear fusion ?

[Like a badger]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

They might want to think about that because France's existing nuclear fleet is ageing. With France reliant upon nuclear power, it's not a good scenario:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351839/age-of-nuclear-power-reactors-france/

[SW]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

We just added our most powerful nuke plant at Flamanville onto our grid this winter.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/12/21/france-s-most-powerful-nuclear-reactor-connected-to-grid-after-17-year-build_6736344_7.html

Also wind is increasing, in 2022 we added 2.1GW capability through both offshore & onshore - more on the way. 2023 wind generation contributed over 50TWh.

https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/generation/wind

The older nuke plants can be turned down to provide power to these new datacentres.

[HuBo]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

Oui! I came strolling through these parts to proferate a similar pronunciation (re: Flamanville EPR, maybe ITER one day).

In belated News though, Luc Ferry (on LCI _{not an endorsement}) mentioned some "great math achievement of AI" that happened just "today" it seems ... had to look it up and it seems it might be this Google self-advertisement on arXiv (also in Nature paywalled): "Gold-medalist Performance in Solving Olympiad Geometry with AlphaGeometry2" as "DeepMind AI crushes [...] human".

So it seems we're getting there, with a DSL of such inspired predicates as "perp a b c d" (Table 1) for forensic applications (means, motive, and opportunity), and "cong a b c d" to help with booking airfare for the "vacances d'hiver imminentes"!

We might need a baguette icon on here If the French keep this up ... (or an accordéon)

[Like a badger]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

"We just added our most powerful nuke plant at Flamanville onto our grid this winter."

I know, until a few years back I worked in the UK energy sector, and we followed European energy developments very closely (on account of the extent of power across the UK:Europe links). But Flamanville isn't so much the solution, as an illustration of the problem. Like the technically similar Hinkley Point C, it's years late and billions over budget. To be more exact, Flamanville is twelve years late, and at least four times the original budget - and it's only a single reactor at 1.6 GW. France (and Britain, and the rest of Europe) can't afford to build new national fleets that costs that sort of money. And the original problem at Oikiluoto*, then at Flamanville, now at Hinkley don't give me any confidence that subsequent EPR builds are coming in adequately quicker or cheaper.

Nuclear power should be the future. But it can't be whilst it's this slow to build and this expensive.

* Sorry, can't be bothered to check the spelling)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

Well, you got Olkiluoto just about full-on correct (visually at least)!

The rather dumb Germans being fooled by Russian propaganda into phasing-out nuclear energy probably led to delays in reactor maintenance and slowed plans for new buildouts across Europe ('cuz Germs have a unique way of making others feel like they're the only ones who actually know what's what and all ...). Putin could then invade Ukraine secure in the knowledge that Germany (and the rest of Europe) would need his gas to heat itself up in winter, and thus wouldn't protest the invasion nearly as much as it should (aka gas-supply blackmail).

With these delays in maintenance, there was at one point (2022) 32 of the 56 nuclear reactors in France that were in temporary stoppage for example. But history is telling us even as we speak just how strategically important for national security, across the EU and Europe even, these nuclear reactors are, and how important it is to keep bringing new ones online imho (beyond AI even).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

"and how important it is to keep bringing new ones online"

Also how daft it was -and certainly not green - to pause building them.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

How did they manage to build dozzens of reactors all them years ago ?

Why are building costs so expensive these days ?

Simple answer, managements.

[RayCollins]

Re: One Gigawatt ?

New reactors already been built, will be around 2035. Don't fall for all those anti French articles. I lived in France 7 years, I can tell you the French have world class infrastructure and basic services.

[EricM]

This is good, honestly.

They might now think, it's for AI. Let them.

As a German, it's a no-brainer to prefer France over the US for hosting workloads.

And by the time this gets operational, AI will be a much more sane market than today, as the pump-billions-into-LLM-training bubble will have burst by that time.

And then we'll get a nice datacenter to put real workloads into, able to avoid AWS and Azure.

A can't see a downside.

[rgjnk]

That's a lot of money...

...to blow on a big shed full of stuff that'll be e-waste in 5 years time.

Not like there's much prospect of the actual AI side of it doing anything useful or profitable in that window either.

As bubbles go this one really has some people piling into the hype with silly decisions, with the money going to those cheerfully selling the 'factory' when no-one is buying the product coming out the other side.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That's a lot of money...

"...to blow on a big shed full of stuff that'll be e-waste in 5 years time."

AWS and Azure make good money on cloud computing. So why not a European center?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: That's a lot of money...

It's not a regular bit-barn. It's going to be stuffed full of GPUs, NPUs or whatever. Are you the same A/C that missed that point earlier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That's a lot of money...

"Are you the same A/C that missed that point earlier?"

I am the same A/C and I did not miss the GPU part.

GPU sheds are also good for aerodynamic & hydrodynamic simulations, as well as finite element analysis. The kind of stuf you need for, say, building airplanes, silent submarines, rockets, tokamak fusion reactors, or nuclear bombs.

It might, just might, be possible that France, in future, become interested in such things. But that is obviously pure speculation.

[captain veg]

bragging rights

When did we start measuring compute power in terms of energy inefficiency?

I sincerely hope all that heat will be put to a good use.

-A.

[codejunky]

Re: bragging rights

@captain veg

"When did we start measuring compute power in terms of energy inefficiency?"

As the 'green madness' took over they had to find ways of accusing us of being sinners. And to be sinners you must have a sin. Only shivering, starving and sitting in the dark will bring you salvation it seems.

[Anonymous Coward]

psychic

All these countries willing to pay out billions of tax payer's money for an automated version of the psychic's con

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

TL,DR:

Next time your boss suggests integrating LLM software with your company's product(s), suggest that linking to a psychic hotline would be quicker and cheaper.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: psychic

and free hookers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: psychic

Free psychic hookers of the paranormal outer space?

[Snowy]

Spend better

Rather than spend more.

[Locomotion69]

It is time for an El Reg AI standard

I am totally confused on AI investments. Its about money, and electric power, DC size.....

Dear user: this add is brought to you using AI for only xxx G$W/acre! (*)

We need another El Reg standard here.

(*) from where you live it may just as well be G£W/acre, G€W/ha, ...

[David Cotton]

Totally unnecessary as Deepseek have shown. There's no reason to run the CCP version, but the models themselves are groundbreaking.

More efficent models are the way forward. All the hardware needed to run all the models we'll need for years, already exists. This is just burning 50bn or 500bn in the US case. Crazy.

[Omnipresent]

There's more here than meets the eye.

It's hitting the headlines in the US and there's a very good article on the AP. Guess who's right in the middle of this? JD Vance and friends. I thought as much, they will work themselves into every data base.

https://apnews.com/article/vance-ai-summit-paris-macron-be59047c41c86b03fafe646ea3a93bc0

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There's more here than meets the eye.

And Vance brought the wife and kids, AI experts all. Hillbillies in Paris?

[CowHorseFrog]

What happened to the UAE hyperloop investment ?