At the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined a transformative plan to position Europe at the forefront of the global AI race. With powerful initiatives like AI Factories, AI Gigafactories, and an investment of EUR 200 billion, von der Leyen calls for a distinctive European approach—focused on safety, collaboration, and innovation. The Summit marks a pivotal moment in harnessing AI for a brighter, more competitive, and secure future for all. Watch as Europe’s AI vision comes to life!
M pres Sher Manuel presidents your Serene highness Prime Ministers excellencies ladies and gentlemen this is the third Summit on AI in just over one year in the same period three new generations of ever more powerful AI models have been released some expect models that will approach human reasoning within a year now the past Summits focused on laying the groundwork for AI safety we build a shared consensus that AI will be safe and that it will promote our values and benefit Humanity but this Summit is focused on action and that is exactly what we need right now the time has come for us to formulate a vision of where we want AI to take us as a society and as humanity and then we need to act and accelerate Europe in getting there and that is what I’d like to address today Europe’s specific place in the global race on AI we want Europe Europe to be one of the leading AI continents and this means embracing a way of life where AI is everywhere you all know that AI can help us boost competitiveness protect our security Shore up Public Health make access to knowledge and information more democratic and this is what you the entrepreneur the researchers the investors The Business Leaders are showcasing here in Paris and that you are doing every single day this is a glimpse of the AI continent we want to become now too often I hear that Europe is late to the race while the United States or China have already gotten ahead I disagree because the AI race is far from being over truth is we’re only at the beginning the frontier is constantly moving Global Leadership is still up for grabs and behind the frontier lies the whole world of AI adoption AI has only just begun to be adopted in the key sectors of our economy and for the key challenges of our times and this should be Europe’s Focus bringing AI to Industry specific applications and harness its power for productivity and for people and this is where Europe can truly lead the race so Europe has everything to gain but of course we need our own distinctive approach to artificial intelligence too often I have heard that we should replicate what others are doing and run after their strength I think that instead we should invest in what we can do best and build our own strengths here in Europe our own strength are our Science and Technology Mastery that we have given to the world as this Summit shows there’s a distinct European brand of AI it is already driving Innovation and adaptation and it is picking up speed so what are the main F features first European AI focuses on on AI adoption in complex applications using our unique industrial and Manufacturing data and knoow second European AI is cooperative it brings talents together from different countries from different sectors from different backgrounds it is that same Spirit of our collabor ative approach to science which has produced many a breakthrough and a huge pool of talent just think about Horizon Europe and third European AI Embraces the power of Open Source and open source can spread much faster along with proprietary systems it is for all these reasons that the AI startup scene in Europe is booming the number of unicorns has increased by 10 times in just a few years so this European brand of open Innovation is showing results but now it needs to be supercharged it needs to get a push and this is why it’s the right place to be here at this AI action Summit we will AC in two ways first we want to accelerate Innovation Europe has some of the world’s fastest public supercomputers we’re now putting them at the service of our best startups and our best scientists so they can forge the AI we need they can test their model they can train their model on our supercomputers in just a few months we’ve set up a record of 12 AI factories and we’re investing 10 billion EUR in then and this is not a promise this is happening right now and it is the largest public investment in AI in the world so this will unlock over 10 times more private investment our goal is that every company not only the big players can access the computing power they need we want AI developers to compete based on how Innovative they are not just on their access to chips or the size of their financial Firepower and now we are also bringing AI factories to the next level to AI Giga factories very large data and Computing infrastructure for very large models we want to replicate the success story of the CERN in Geneva as you all know CERN host the largest particle accelerator in the world and it allows the best and the brightest Minds in the world to work together and we want the same to happen in our AI Giga factories we provide the infrastructure for large computational power researchers and entrepreneurs and innovators will be able to join forces talents of the world are welcome Industries will be able to collaborate and Federate their data we’re creating safe space for them just like the take the European health data space because yes AI needs competition but AI also needs collaboration and AI needs the confidence of the people and has to be safe and actually this is the purpose of the AI act to provide for one single set of safe rules across the European Union 450 million people instead of 27 different National regulations and safeties in the interest of business at the same time I know that we have to make it easier and we have to cut red tape and we will finally computational power requires immediate substantial Financial capital from both both public and private in this context I welcome the European AI Champions initiative that pledges €50 billion EUR from providers investors and Industry and today I can announce that with our invest AI initiative we can top up by 50 billion e so thereby we a aim to mobilize a total of € 200 billion EUR for AI investment in Europe we will have a focus on Industrial and Mission critical applications it will be the largest public private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy Ai and finally Cooperative AI can be attracted Ive well beyond Europe including our partners in the global South and in this Spirit we fully support the AI Foundation that is being launched today AI can be a gift to humanity but we must make sure that it benefits up wi spread and that its benefits are accessible to all we want AI to be a force for good we want an AI where everyone collaborates and everyone benefits this is our path this is our European path thank you very much for your attention thank you