SoftBank Group announced it will invest up to €75 billion — roughly $87.5 billion — to build 5 gigawatts of SoftBank France AI data center capacity, the largest single AI infrastructure commitment in European history. The first phase locks in €45 billion for 3.1 GW in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031.
SoftBank published the full announcement on May 31, naming partners French energy giant EDF and engineering company Schneider Electric. Construction will span three sites: Dunkirk (Loon-Plage), Bosquel, and Bouchain — all in northern France, close to undersea power cables and Atlantic wind corridors that give the region a structural advantage for always-on AI workloads.
Why France, and Why Now
The deal is the direct result of diplomacy between French President Emmanuel Macron and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who met during Macron’s state visit to Japan earlier this year. France has been aggressively courting hyperscale AI investment after falling behind the US and China on raw compute capacity. For SoftBank, it’s a chance to place the Vision Fund’s biggest infrastructure bet yet at a moment when European governments are offering favorable regulatory terms and cheap nuclear power that US states can’t match.
The scale is hard to overstate. Five gigawatts is roughly equivalent to the entire current AI data center footprint of the UK and Germany combined. It positions France — and by extension Europe — as a genuine third pole in the global AI compute race that has so far been dominated by US hyperscalers and Chinese AI labs.
What $87 Billion of Compute Actually Buys
Data centers at this scale are built to run frontier AI training runs and inference at hyperscale. Schneider Electric will operate a robotized industrial production cluster in Dunkirk — effectively a factory for building out the campus at speed. EDF supplies nuclear-backed baseload power, critical for the round-the-clock AI workloads that solar and wind alone can’t sustain.
SoftBank hasn’t confirmed which AI chip supplier will fill the racks, but a 5 GW commitment at this timeline points to NVIDIA GB300 clusters or their 2027-28 successors. Jensen Huang has been vocal about the coming demand for sovereign AI infrastructure, and this deal fits that thesis exactly. It also underscores why enterprise AI adoption has stalled in Europe: without local compute, companies have been entirely dependent on US cloud providers with cross-Atlantic latency and data residency concerns.
The Catch: “Up To” Does a Lot of Work
The €75 billion headline is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Phase 1 commits €45 billion through 2031; the remaining €30 billion is conditional on regulatory approvals, grid capacity, and whether AI demand justifies the continued build-out. SoftBank is not funding this from its own balance sheet: expect a mix of debt financing, French government subsidies, and co-investors to emerge over the next 12 to 18 months.
The announcement also carries the familiar weight of Son’s previous mega-pledges. In 2016 he promised Trump $50 billion in US investment; delivery was uneven. In 2019 he bet $10 billion on WeWork, which nearly collapsed. That history doesn’t disqualify the France plan — but it does mean the market will wait for concrete groundbreaking before pricing this in.
What to Watch Next
The key milestones are planning permission at the Dunkirk site (expected Q3 2026), the first grid connection agreement with EDF, and whether Masayoshi Son confirms a chip supply agreement at SoftBank’s annual shareholder meeting in June. Any delay on those three will signal that the €75 billion headline is softer than it looks.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is SoftBank investing in France AI data centers?
SoftBank has committed up to €75 billion (~$87.5 billion) to build 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity across France, with a first phase of €45 billion targeting 3.1 GW by 2031.
Where will the SoftBank France AI data centers be built?
The three confirmed locations are Dunkirk (Loon-Plage), Bosquel, and Bouchain — all in the Hauts-de-France region in northern France.
Who are SoftBank’s partners for the France data center project?
SoftBank has announced partnerships with Schneider Electric (industrial production cluster in Dunkirk) and EDF (power supply at the Bouchain data center).
