MGX, the UAE sovereign investment fund focused on artificial intelligence and advanced technology, has entered a joint venture with Bpifrance, Mistral AI, and NVIDIA to develop Europe’s largest AI campus in the Paris region. The announcement was made during the Choose France Summit in Versailles.
The facility, located in Europe’s highest GDP zone, is expected to reach a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts once complete. Construction will start in the second half of 2026, with operations to commence in 2028.
The project follows bilateral AI cooperation agreements signed during the AI Action Summit in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, under the endorsement of UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The campus will support the entire AI lifecycle, from model training and inference to deployment. It will feature exascale computing capabilities, low-carbon hyperscale data centres, and sovereign cloud integration. Areas of application will include healthcare, finance, energy, manufacturing, mobility, and public services.
The venture was formalised in the presence of Eric Lombard, French Minister for the Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority and member of the UAE’s AI and Advanced Technology Council.
Academic contributions will come from École Polytechnique, which will establish a teaching and research chair in partnership with Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. The initiative is expected to fund PhD programmes and collaborative research projects.
Infrastructure and utility partners include Bouygues, EDF Group, RTE, and Sipartech. Bouygues will oversee construction. EDF will supply low-carbon energy. RTE will fast-track energy transmission links, while Sipartech will provide high-capacity fibre connectivity.
The open-access campus will also host experimental environments for AI systems and serve as a private and public sector collaboration hub. It is positioned as part of a broader push to build sovereign digital infrastructure in Europe and reduce dependence on non-European providers. The project aligns with France’s efforts to scale its AI industrial base and the UAE’s technology export strategy.
