SoftBank commits up to €75B for AI data centres in France, €45B firm
What's the deal? SoftBankDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has announced plans to invest up to €75 billion to build 5 GW of AI data centre capacity across France — one of the largest single-country AI infrastructure commitments ever made. The deal was unveiled at President Macron's annual Choose France summit.
Only €45 billion of that figure is firm. That portion covers 3.1 GW of capacity across three sites in the Hauts-de-France region — Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain — targeted for completion by 2031. The remaining €30 billion and 1.9 GW are plans, not contracts.
SoftBank will develop the projects with its subsidiary SB EnergyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and partners including Schneider ElectricDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which will co-develop a robotised manufacturing cluster at the Port of Dunkirk, and EDFDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which will supply low-carbon electricity at the Bouchain site.
"AI is entering a new era, and the countries that build the infrastructure for this transformation will shape the future of technology, industry and society," said Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's founder.
Why now? France's nuclear grid — the most reliable low-carbon electricity network in Europe — gives it a structural edge over Germany and the UK, both of which face tighter energy constraints. A 5 GW build at full capacity would consume more electricity than several European cities combined.
SoftBank also cited France's industrial land availability and engineering workforce. The Dunkirk site's proximity to London, Brussels, and Amsterdam positions it as a hub for northern European enterprise demand.
What could go wrong? The gap between the firm €45 billion and the headline €75 billion deserves scrutiny. SoftBank carries net debt of $122.9 billion and took US$25.9B unsecured bridge loan in March 2026 to fund its latest OpenAI follow-on. That loan's 12-month maturity is widely read as a bet on an OpenAI IPO before March 2027.
SoftBank's track record is mixed. Its $20 million stake in Alibaba returned roughly $70 billion at peak. But its most painful miscalculation — WeWork — cost it more than $10 billion. Whether it can execute a massive infrastructure buildout while managing heavy leverage is an open question.
The signal: SoftBank's €75 billion headline figure positions it alongside — and in direct competition with — the hyperscalers that have dominated Europe's AI infrastructure race. But the firm's mature-stage profile and heavy debt load make this a fundamentally different kind of bet: rather than deploying from cloud revenue, SoftBank is leveraging its balance sheet on the conviction that sovereign AI demand will justify build-ahead economics. The fact that France's nuclear grid is the centrepiece of the pitch underscores a shift in how AI infrastructure deals are won — not by tax breaks alone, but by guaranteed access to low-carbon power at scale.
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