Emmanuel Macron held the ninth edition of the Choose France investment forum in Versailles, where the Élysée announced that 71 international projects totaling €93 billion would be declared. That amount is a record for the forum and more than double the €40 billion announced at the 2025 summit.
What is driving the jump?
The increase is mainly driven by investments linked to artificial intelligence and data centers. The largest single commitment reported concerns the Japanese group SoftBank: the company pledged a total of €75 billion for data-center developments in France, but the Élysée counted €45 billion of that promise in the Choose France tally because only the portion tied to the Hauts-de-France region is considered secured.
According to government communications, the projects announced could create more than 15,600 jobs. Organizers invited over 200 foreign corporate executives to the forum; European company leaders remain the majority, while American participants account for about 18 percent.
Geopolitical backdrop: Trump-era trade uncertainty
A key element of the messaging is that Macron is positioning France as a stable alternative for investors amid trade-policy and legal uncertainty associated with Donald Trump’s actions. The reporting notes that Trump’s tariff policy significantly raised the US average tariff level by the end of 2025, and court rulings and subsequent presidential steps left trade-policy uncertainty in place into 2026. Macron’s pitch is that France — particularly on low-carbon energy, artificial intelligence, data centers and strategic industries — can offer a more predictable European location for international capital compared with the United States.
Sectors and investor outreach
The announced projects focus primarily on:
- artificial intelligence
- data centers
- pharmaceuticals
- electrification
- rare earths
French officials emphasize the country’s low-carbon-intensity energy mix as an investment advantage. Organizers are also deliberately courting investors from Gulf states and Asia to reduce reliance on traditional Western capital sources amid rising geopolitical and trade risks.
Numbers and criticisms
The Choose France forum has been a showcase for French economic policy. The Élysée notes that, according to EY’s annual survey, France has been the top European destination for foreign investors since 2019. However, the overall picture is mixed: Les Echos reports that the number of international investment decisions for France fell in 2025 to a low not seen since 2017, with a 17 percent decline larger than that in Germany or the United Kingdom.
Industrial-policy expert Olivier Lluansi points out that in recent years foreign industrial firms have withdrawn almost as much as they invested, and that about 20,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in 2025. The Élysée acknowledges that Choose France is not a cure-all but rather a high-profile political and business platform.
Why this matters for Macron
The publicity around the €93 billion package serves both domestic political aims and an investor-attraction strategy: Macron seeks to bring industrial and technological investment back to France, and the forum demonstrates Paris’s active effort to redirect projects that companies may no longer wish to place automatically in the United States because of growing American uncertainty. With the 2027 presidential election approaching, however, the government will face increasing pressure to offer investors predictable, long-term policy stability.
Tags: economic policy, Donald Trump, energy, investment, artificial intelligence, Emmanuel Macron, France, data center, geopolitics, investment
