France makes high-profile push to be the A.I. hub of Europe setting up challenge to U.S., China
French President Emmanuel Macron attended the country’s premier technology event Viva Tech. Macron told CNBC France will “invest like crazy” into A.I.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
PARIS — France is making a major push to position itself as Europe’s hub for artificial intelligence, throwing its weight behind the fast-growing and much-hyped technology.
“I think we are number one [in AI] in continental Europe, and we have to accelerate,” French President Emmanuel Macron told CNBC’s Karen Tso last week.
Countries are looking to position themselves as AI hubs, because the technology is seen as revolutionary and therefore of strategic importance to governments around the world. AI is viewed as impacting industries from finance to healthcare, but has also been caught in the middle of the broader technology battle playing out between China and the U.S.
Hype around AI has been partly sparked by the viral nature of U.S. firm OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
AI was the phrase on everyone’s lips at France’s annual technology conference Viva Tech, from startups to established technology firms, along with companies from industries as diverse as cosmetics and banking.
Macron, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and Digital Minister Jean-Noel Barrot attended the event, adding the government’s backing to France’s tech push.
“We will invest like crazy on training and research,” Macron told CNBC, adding that France is well-positioned in AI due to its access to talent and start-ups forming around the technology.
While the U.S is seen as the leader in AI by many measures, France hopes to catch up.
“Believe me this is clear that the U.S. is number one, for good reason because it is a huge domestic market … I want us to clearly bridge the gap and invest much more, develop much more and accelerate much more,” Macron said.
Paris’ ambitions face tough competition even within the European Union.
“France definitely has a chance to be the leader in Europe, but it faces stiff competition from Germany and the U.K.,” Anton Dahbura, Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, told CNBC via email.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the past week made his pitch for Britain to become a global AI center.
Dahbura said that, for France to find success, it will need to “use AI to build on the economic areas it’s already strong in,” such as manufacturing and pharmaceutical.
“It’s a key time to be strategic to identify specific areas of distinct competency and invest heavily in AI to build an edge,” Dahbura said.
French A.I. companies in focus
U.S. companies currently dominate the conversation around AI, with names such as Microsoft — which invested in OpenAI — and chipmaker Nvidia staying top of mind.
France doesn’t have an AI giant like the U.S., but wants to create two or three “big global players” in the technology, according to Macron.
it is banking on its startups to grow quickly. Underscoring the potential and hype of AI developments, four-week-old French startup Mistral AI raised 105 million euros to fund the company. A number of other local startups were showing off their wares at Viva Tech.
Global A.I. regulation in focus
Part of France’s pitch to be an A.I. hub leads on regulation around the technology.
The European Parliament greenlit the EU AI Act, a wide-sweeping first-of-its-kind regulation on artificial intelligence. It is not yet law, but, if passed, would bring a risk-based approach to regulation across the EU.
France has typically been seen as a proponent of strong regulation on technology — but it has taken issue with parts of the EU AI Act related to generative AI, the type of technology that underpins OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which it sees as too stringent.
“My worry is that in the recent past few weeks, the EU Parliament … has taken a very sort of strong stance on AI regulation, using, in some sense, this AI act as a way to try and solve too many problems at once,” Barrot, France’s digital minister, said on the provisions around generative AI.
France desires a global regulation on A.I., which it hopes to achieve through the G7 group that includes the U.S. and Britain, as well as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
“From my point of view … I think we do need a regulation and all the players, even the U.S. players, agree with that. I think we need a global regulation,” Macron said.
U.S. seen as frenemy
France sees the U.S. as both a rival and an ally. French and European companies will try to compete with U.S. giants like Microsoft and Google, but Washington’s by-in is required for any kind of global regulation .
“Competition is always a good thing. So we have a very close cooperation with the U.S., but we also want to get access to our own AI intelligence and companies. So I think that having a fair competition between the U.S. and Europe and also a co-operation on some key devices is good for the U.S. and good for Europe,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, told CNBC.
“On regulation as well, I think this is absolutely vital to have an in-depth discussion with the American authorities on the best way of regulating artificial intelligence.”
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
- Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
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Technology
YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement
Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.
The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter from Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.
“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.
YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.
Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.
This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”
In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.
Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.
In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”
YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.
YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.
Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.
YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.
In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.
People walk past an Amazon Fresh store in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2021.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon plans to close all of its Fresh supermarkets in the U.K., in the latest recalibration of its grocery strategy.
The company said in a Tuesday blog that it’s preparing to close all 19 of its Fresh U.K. stores, “following a thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery.” Five of the Fresh locations are expected to be converted into Whole Foods stores, Amazon said.
Amazon opened its first Fresh location outside the U.S. in London in 2021, about a year after it debuted the store concept in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Fresh stores offer cheaper prices and more mass-market items compared to Whole Foods, the upscale supermarket chain Amazon acquired for $13.7 billion in 2017. Many of the stores also feature Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology.
The Fresh store pullback in the U.K. comes as Amazon has continued to adjust its grocery ambitions. The company has slowed expansion of its Fresh grocery chain and Go cashierless stores in the U.S. It still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
At the same time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items like canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks.
Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
The company on Tuesday also said that it plans to offer same-day delivery of groceries, including perishable items, in the U.K. beginning next year.
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