Macron, Modi court AI giants for data center investment; France targets 5 GW capacity by 2031

French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are leading personal outreach to major tech CEOs to secure AI data center investment and cloud infrastructure commitments. Macron personally convinced SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son to commit tens of billions to AI data center projects in France, while Modi last week welcomed Amazon's "record $48 billion investment" in India, of which $21 billion is earmarked for AI and cloud infrastructure.

France is pursuing a 75-billion-euro program to roll out 5 GW of AI data center capacity by 2031, with SoftBank announcing plans to build 3.1 GW as part of the initiative. Macron leveraged France's abundant nuclear power supply to secure SoftBank's commitment, negotiating an increase from the initially proposed 2 GW to 3.1 GW. India is pursuing a parallel AI leadership strategy, with Modi meeting Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to encourage domestic semiconductor and AI ecosystem development.

Both countries are using long-term tax breaks and regulatory incentives to attract hyperscaler capex. India lacks domestic cutting-edge chip production and frontier-scale foundation models, positioning AI infrastructure investment as its key lever for avoiding technological isolation. The recent global AI stocks rally has "completely skipped India" due to the absence of large-scale AI plays, underscoring Modi's urgency to attract capital and technology.

For practitioners: Geographic AI infrastructure is bifurcating: U.S. and China lead on model/chip development; Europe and Asia-Pacific are positioning as capacity-efficient hosts for inference and deployment. Power availability (France's nuclear), labor costs, and tax incentives are now primary differentiators for data center siting. Expect announcements of additional data center clusters in geopolitically friendly jurisdictions through H2 2026.