Iliad to spend €3 billion on AI, while Macron commits France to €109 billionIliad to spend €3 billion on AI, while Macron commits France to €109 billion

Both revelations came alongside the AI Action Summit, which opened its doors in Paris on Monday. Iliad essentially used the summit as a platform from which to shout about its AI credentials. The €3 billion refers to ongoing AI investment plans, rather than a new headline deal or similar. But it's worth noting as it's no small amount of money for a European telco to plough into AI.

The lion's share of the sum is going into data centres, as you might expect. Iliad has been adding to its data centre capabilities for the past few years and now says it will spend €2.5 billion via its OpCore data centres unit "to step up its position as a European leader in hyperscale data centres, which are notably used for AI computing resources."

The money is coming from a partnership with private equity firm InfraVia.

As a result, the OpCore business will have several hundred megawatts of capacity at its disposal in the short term, Iliad said, while its long-term aim is to build several gigawatts of capacity across Europe.

The rest of the investment seems to be split across a number of areas of AI-related business, including B2B cloud subsidiary Scaleway, which 18 months ago announced plans to deploy what it claimed was Europe's most powerful AI supercomputer, and the €100 million Iliad ploughed into nonprofit open-science AI research lab Kyutai.

This is not new spend; it's all part of Iliad's existing AI roadmap. But there were some new AI-related announcements from Iliad too.

The firm used the summit to launch le Chat Pro, a premium version of its le Chat AI assistant developed by Mistral AI. Upgrades include a Flash Answers feature, which provides speedy answers to questions, plus unlimited web searches and messaging.

Arguably more interesting is the fact that Iliad is offering new and existing mobile customers the chance to use le Chat Pro free of charge for 12 months. That's quite a long test period for a product that the operator clearly views as a high-end add-on; it will charge €17.99 per month once the promotion period ends. It is doubtless hoping that le Chat Pro will prove so useful that customers will be willing to pay rather than give it up, but an extra €18 per month might prove a bit of a stretch in many cases. Time will tell how that one pans out.

In addition, the aforementioned Kyutai research lab has just released Hibiki, a new AI-based audio model for simultaneous translation. Iliad described the launch as "a new milestone" in voice technology.

"We're investing €3 billion across the entire value chain – from data centres to computing power and open-science research, and we're democratizing AI through our partnership with Mistral," said Iliad Group CEO Thomas Reynaud, in a statement. "The reason we've taken so many initiatives over the past three years is because we know that it’s a decisive time, when our society's future is being played out."

Iliad's AI spend is noteworthy, but pales into insignificance alongside its nation's overall investment plans.

French President Emmanuel Macron revealed in recent days that his country will spend €109 billion on AI projects in the coming years.

However, he did not give much away as to what that will actually mean. Presumably, like the Iliad announcement, these are spending plans that are already underway. Much of the commentary from the announcement is around France keeping up with the likes of the US and China.

As France 24 reports, the Macron presentation was peppered with AI-generated videos from recent years featuring the president in a series of unlikely escapades – dancing, rapping and so forth. The actual meat of the announcement seems to be missing, with Macron talking vaguely about using AI to advance healthcare, society and so forth.

Nonetheless, both Macron and Iliad are doing what we are coming to expect as AI gathers momentum: engaging variously in one-upmanship and keeping up with Joneses. There will be plenty more of that to come from all angles.