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SoftBank to spend up to $87 billion on French AI data centers — country offers ample nuclear grid that US sites lack
SoftBank Group will commit as much as €75 billion ($87 billion) to build five gigawatts of AI data center capacity across France, with a first €45 billion ($52 billion) phase delivering 3.1GW in the northern Hauts-de-France region by 2031. The Japanese group called it its largest AI infrastructure investment in Europe to date, with state-owned utility company EDF and France's Schneider Electric named as partners. Phase one covers three sites: Dunkirk's Loon-Plage, Bosquel, and Bouchain, and Masayoshi Son and President Emmanuel Macron are set to formalize the plan on Monday at the Choose France summit.
What France offers is electricity: the country draws roughly 70% of its power from nuclear reactors run by EDF, is the world's largest net electricity exporter, and posts industrial power prices well under half the UK's. Son told the publication La Tribune du Dimanche that France being a producer and exporter of energy was "absolutely decisive" for AI infrastructure spending. EDF is contributing to the Bouchain site, a former power plant, which it will hand over for conversion.
There’s a stark contrast between this and SoftBank’s American plans, where, to feed its planned 10GW data center in Ohio, the company has to build its own energy generation infrastructure in the form of a natural gas plant that’ll cost roughly $33 billion to build and generate roughly 9.2GW. France lets it skip that step and plug into an existing low-carbon fleet, sidestepping the strained grids and rising local opposition slowing U.S. buildouts.
With Schneider Electric, SoftBank plans to build an industrial cluster at the Port of Dunkirk, built around two plants, one run by SoftBank to make enclosures and one run by Schneider to integrate data center power modules
That pulls SoftBank's automation work into prefabricated electrical kit, extending the company’s vertical integration — which already spans Arm, robotics, and its own water-based data center batteries — even further. EDF chairman Bernard Fontana said in the announcement that the Bouchain project showed France's ability to host large-scale digital infrastructure on "competitive, sovereign and low-carbon electricity."
The French investment adds to a global spending run that includes the Ohio project and more than $30 billion sunk into OpenAI for an 11% stake. SoftBank carries over $130 billion in debt and took a $40 billion bridge loan in March to fund its latest OpenAI investment. The €75 billion figure is also a ceiling; only the €45 billion first phase and its 3.1GW are firm commitments, with the remaining sites described as plans for later.
Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
