Global Leaders Seek to Leverage AI for Economic Growth

Political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have sought to meet with some of the world’s leading tech CEOs to secure investment and large infrastructure projects.

Macron previously hosted AI firm leaders at the G7 summit last month and personally asked SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to invest billions of dollars into France’s AI data centre strategy.

Additionally, Prime Minister Modi met Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last week, thanking the retail leader for his record US$48bn investment into India, of which US$21bn will go towards the country’s AI and cloud infrastructure.

Modi also met with several other tech leaders in the previous year, such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to discuss similar AI investment plans for India’s economy.

France’s US$81bn data centre investment

Following Masayoshi’s meeting with Macron, SoftBank announced plans to build 3.1GW of AI data centre infrastructure by 2031, as part of a €75bn (around US$81bn) investment programme to establish 5GW of French AI data centre capacity.

Speaking with Masayoshi, Macron highlighted France’s existing power capacity – which receives a large portion of its electricity from nuclear – and committed to securing 3GW of power for the country instead of 2GW, the number that was initially floated by the French president.

Speaking about Macron and his plans for France’s data centre buildout, Masayoshi says that Macron’s government “is very supportive” and that France and SoftBank’s teams “work in collaboration very well”.

At the same time, Macron invited several tech leaders to a working lunch with other world leaders – including US President Donald Trump – at the G7 conference, which France hosted.

Major tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis were all present at the conference.

Also in attendance were Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, Synthesia’s Victor Riparbelli and Black Forest Labs’ Robin Rombach.

India’s plan to catch up to other AI-ready economies

Similarly to Macron, Modi also hosted several top tech leaders earlier this year at the India AI Impact Summit, which resulted in several billion-dollar tech investments for the country.

Securing investments and global partnerships has become a key goal in Modi’s AI and economic growth strategies.

India does not currently manufacture AI-ready chips or any kind of US or China-level AI model, two aspects that have seen it lag behind amid the AI boom.

Prior to the AI summit, India secured Microsoft’s largest investment in Asia to help establish sovereign infrastructure for India. Additionally, Google also announced a US$15bn investment into the country to create the world’s largest AI hub.

The country largely relies on foreign AI models and computing hardware, limiting its AI ambitions. 

Modi has sought to attract capital and technology investment to counter this, encouraging local companies to develop semiconductors and offering government-backed long-term tax breaks to AI hyperscalers.

Discussing his government’s plans for AI integration at the summit, Modi says: “India does not see fear in AI. India sees fortune in AI. India sees the future in AI.”