France to see €4 billion investment from Microsoft

France is set to see a €4 billion investment from technology giant Microsoft, as they focus on developing data centers and boosting the country’s infrastructure.

The announcement was told on Sunday (May 12) when the company’s president Brad Smith spoke with the French newspaper Le Figaro. The news came just a day before the seventh Choose France Summit event which aims to encourage foreign investors to the area.

The investment will create a new data center in eastern France in Mulhouse and expand the current sites in the Paris region and in the southern city of Marseille.

Microsoft is also aiming to help train a million people and support 2,500 startups by 2027.

Amazon to join Microsoft in investing in France

On Monday (May 13) Amazon joined Microsoft in its commitment to the country with $1.2 billion to be invested.

Amazon says this will create more than 3,000 jobs and increase its footprint in France. These jobs are in addition to the 2,000 jobs the company announced for 2024.

The €1.2 billion investment will drive the expansion of Amazon’s logistics network, allowing them to reduce the time and distance to serve customers better. It should lead to increased delivery speeds and a reduction in carbon emissions.

The investment will span the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure too which will help organizations to build and modernize their business with the technology.

The VP of AWS in France and Southern Europe Julien Groues says: “France stands at the dawn of an unprecedented economic opportunity driven by AI.

“Companies across industries recognize AI’s immense benefits for unlocking growth and boosting productivity. With this commitment to expand our cloud capacity, we are empowering organizations in France to fully harness the potential of transformative AI technologies to spur innovation, enhance competitiveness, and create new business value.

“This commitment aligns with AWS’ comprehensive AI strategy—to provide our customers the broadest selection of AI services with the highest performance, security, and compliance with data residency regulations, all at the lowest possible cost for our customers.”

Featured image: Photo by Anthony Choren on Unsplash

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