AI Is in Fashion in France — and It’s Here to Stay
Artificial intelligence is making waves in France, much like it is around the world — but in true French fashion, it’s becoming a defining trend across industries. From cutting-edge research and innovation to transportation, manufacturing, and beyond, AI is playing a pivotal role in solving some of the country’s most pressing challenges.At the heart of this momentum is France’s National Strategy for AI, a cornerstone of the broader France 2030 investment initiative. With over €109 billion allocated, the country is heavily investing in AI infrastructure to support long-term growth and innovation.
A major example of this is the partnership between NVIDIA and Mistral AI — a leading French generative AI company — to develop a powerful, end-to-end compute platform designed to meet the evolving needs of enterprise customers.
Alongside this collaboration, a wave of AI-native startups, tech companies, and research institutions across France are building on NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure to drive breakthroughs in multiple sectors.These innovators are leveraging the latest agentic and industrial AI technologies to transform everything from targeted advertising in the skincare and beauty industry — with initiatives led by L’Oréal and Accenture — to smarter transportation systems and a more resilient electric grid.
France’s green energy profile is another key asset in its AI push. With abundant, decarbonized electricity, a growing high-voltage grid, and more than 30 low-carbon, AI-ready sites across the country, France is uniquely positioned to lead the world in sustainable artificial intelligence.
Below are some of the key players driving this AI-powered transformation — making AI not just a tool of the future, but the latest and most enduring trend in France’s innovation landscape.
AI Infrastructure Development Across Industries
Mistral AI’s new compute platform will feature the latest-generation NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems, with 18,000 Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra GPUs planned for deployment in the initial phase and additional plans to expand across multiple sites in 2026. The infrastructure will host Mistral AI’s cloud application service, which customers can use to develop and run AI applications with Mistral AI’s and other providers’ open-source models.
Mistral AI and NVIDIA are optimizing inference performance for several Mistral models with NVIDIA NIM microservices, including the new Mistral Nemotron model, exclusively available with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform.
We are forging Europe’s AI future in partnership with NVIDIA, combining strategic autonomy with our expertise in AI and NVIDIA’s most advanced technology, said Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI. This new infrastructure will provide enterprises and the public sector with Mistral’s AI expertise in building the best compute for AI, ensuring full control to businesses.