Countries are fighting to keep up with AI – and French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are leading personal crimes against tech CEOs in court.
The pair have stepped up moves to court leaders of the world’s biggest tech companies this year, as they look to protect investments and major AI infrastructure projects.
They stand out among countries striving to develop data centers and the ecosystem needed to enable technology, through their use of personal relationships.
The French President hosted AI executives at the G7 summit in June, and was personally convinced SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to invest tens of billions of dollars in AI data centers in the country.
Modi met him Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last Thursday, and welcomed a “record investment of US $ 48 billion” in the country, of which 21 billion dollars will be AI and cloud infrastructure.
Modi last year met Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, have all pledged to help develop India’s AI ecosystem.
Macron hosts AI leaders
In May, SoftBank announced plans to build 3.1 GW of AI data centers in France by 2031, as part of a $75 billion plan to roll out 5 GW of AI data center capacity.
Macron requested a meeting with SoftBank’s Son to persuade him to commit to the project two months ago, and the two exchanged texts as they hashed out details, Son told CNBC in an interview.
Macron raised France’s energy – the country gets a lot of electricity from nuclear – and committed to getting SoftBank’s projects 3GW instead of 2GW, the number the French Prime Minister proposed for the first time, he added.
“His team, the government team is very supportive,” said Son. “His team and our team work very well together.”
At the same time, Macron talked technology executives into joining lunch with world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, at the G7 summit in June, hosted by France.
CEOs include Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis all participated.
Other technology chiefs include France-based Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Canada-based Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, Italian firm Uljan Sharka, UK AI scaleup Synthesia’s Victor Riparbelli and Germany-based Black Forest Labs’ Robin Rombach.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) takes a group photo with AI company leaders including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (2nd R), Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (R), Google CEO Sundar Photosi (2nd L), and Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang (L), at the AI Impact Conference in New Delhi on February 19, 2020.
Ludovic Marin Afp | Getty Images
India
Modi also hosted top US technology leaders earlier this year at the Global AI summit in India, which led to the commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars to Indian AI efforts.
“India sees no fear in AI. India sees fortune in AI. India sees the future in AI,” Modi said in his opening speech at the conference in February, urging global technology leaders to “Design and Develop in India” to deliver to the world.
Securing investment and partnerships to develop AI has been a priority for Modi. India has not yet produced high-end chips domestically, and does not have a frontier scale base model on par with the leading US or Chinese models, so it is widely seen as a laggard in the AI race.
The prime minister has been encouraging tech firms around the world to invest in developing AI infrastructure and chips in the country.
In the months leading up to the summit, India is on the defensive Microsoft the largest investment in Asia to help build the independent capacity needed for India’s first AI future, while Google announced a $15 billion investment in India to build the world’s largest AI center outside the US To encourage hyperscalers to build AI data centers in India, Modi’s government has given them a long-term tax break.
It also encourages local companies to develop semiconductors in the country.
During Modi’s visit to the Netherlands in May, Dutch company ASML said it would supply advanced lithography tools and solutions for the 300mm semiconductor fabric developed by Indian company Tata Electronics. Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan, who met Modi last December, also signed up as a potential buyer of chips made by Tata Electronics.
India relies heavily on foreign AI models and computer hardware, making its AI ambitions vulnerable to export control orders.
The recent global rally in AI stocks has bypassed India entirely due to the lack of any big AI play, making Modi’s urgency to attract capital and technology more visible and important.
