Forty-five million euros for quantum computing: the American group IBM will develop its research laboratory in France. An investment over several years that he will announce on Monday May 13 as part of the Choose France summit, a source close to the matter confirmed to AFP this Friday. It will lead to the hiring of around fifty engineers and researchers by 2025 to enable the missions of the IBM France Lab Paris-Saclay center to be extended to quantum, this source indicated.
IBM but also Amazon, Hager… Before Monday’s 7th edition of the Choose France summit, chaired by Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, first information filtered through on Friday on the investments that could be announced there. According to the economic daily Les Echos, Amazon “would like to spend 1.3 billion euros on a data center for its cloud subsidiary AWS and a warehouse for its e-commerce activities”, enough to create “3,000 jobs”.
Contacted by AFP, Amazon responded that it had “no comment to make ahead of any possible announcement that would be made” at the Choose France summit. One of its vice-presidents, Russell Grandinetti, is nevertheless among a list of guests at the event.
The German electrical equipment specialist Hager “plans to invest several tens of millions of euros on its two French production sites (Obernai and Bischwiller in Bas-Rhin, Editor’s note) in the coming years,” indicated a source close to the file to AFP. Emmanuel Macron must also, on Monday morning, visit a factory in the Marne of the Canadian manufacturer of frozen fries McCain to make a “very nice announcement (…) illustrating the impact of French attractiveness,” said Friday the Elysium.
In 2023, 28 projects were announced to Choose France for a total of 13 billion euros. According to a compilation by L’Usine nouvelle magazine, since the launch of this annual forum in 2018, 122 projects have been announced for a total of 31.9 billion euros, mainly involving extensions of already existing sites. For the 7th edition of the summit, entitled “Land of champions” in reference to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the number of investment projects announced on Monday should be “record” according to the Élysée.
This in a context where France will be very visible in 2024 – Games, 80th anniversary of the Landing, reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral… – and against a backdrop of apparent economic recovery, growth and employment having defied more pessimistic expectations, each increasing by 0.2% in the first quarter.
In 2023, for the fifth consecutive year, France remained the leading country in Europe for foreign investments, ahead of the United Kingdom and Germany, according to the EY firm barometer, with 1,194 project announcements, representing 39,773 job creations. . Using a different methodology, Business France, France’s public economic promotion structure, even counted 1,815 foreign investment decisions last year.
Some 180 foreign bosses are expected in Versailles on Monday, the maximum possible “to keep the event a reasonable size”, according to the Élysée, and allow them to each meet at least one French minister. Announced in particular are the directors of ArcelorMittal, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, or even AstraZeneca and Novartis in the field of pharmacy, Envision and Air Products in the industrial field, and those of the Saudi or Qatari.
More than half will be non-European (20% North American and 20% Asian in particular) and around a third are coming for the first time. Around sixty French bosses are also expected.
