TheChek News Flow

Macron aims to dedicate a gigawatt of nuclear power to create one of the world’s largest AI computing facilities

France is making a bid to catch up in the artificial intelligence race by leaning on one of its strengths: plentiful nuclear power.

The French government plans Monday to pledge a gigawatt of nuclear power for a new artificial-intelligence computing project expected to cost tens of billions of dollars, according to its private-sector backers and the French government.

Combined with another newly announced French AI project funded by Middle Eastern investors that also aims for gigawatt scale, the plans would greatly expand Europe’s AI-computing capabilities to rival a vast expansion in the U.S.

The nuclear project, which aims to have a first tranche of 250 megawatts of power hooked up to AI-computing chips by the end of 2026, rivals the Stargate project in the U.S., backed by SoftBank and OpenAI. Stargate is starting with a campus in Texas initially fed by 200 megawatts of power, with plans to expand to 1.2 gigawatts.

FluidStack, the company spearheading the nuclear-powered AI cluster in France, said it aims to begin construction in the third quarter. Still, there is no guarantee its project will move forward as envisioned, or if it will secure enough money—or AI chips—to build it.

AI computing requires vast amounts of power as big tech companies shell out billions of dollars to build massive clusters of electricity-hungry chips. Those chips, mostly made by Nvidia, are the workhorses of the AI boom, performing the computations that underlie AI models.

Some of today’s most advanced AI models were trained at data centers with about 30 megawatts of electricity, the research group Epoch AI estimates. But by 2030, leading AI models may need more than 5 gigawatts of electricity—a Manhattan-sized amount.

The emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese-made AI model purportedly built with far fewer chips than its competitors, raised doubt recently about the need for clusters of chips that have ballooned into the hundreds of thousands. But Nvidia said rapid AI advances would require ever more of its chips, and big tech companies are pushing forward with unprecedented spending on them.

To finance the first tranche of construction, FluidStack said it plans to deploy its own cash and secure loans for 10 billion euros, or $10.3 billion. It said talks are continuing with some of the world’s largest AI developers about using the new facility, which could house around 120,000 of Nvidia’s AI chips in its first phase and some 500,000 by 2028 if the site is fully built out. The company said it could further expand to a 10 gigawatt facility, 10 times larger, by 2030.

Much of the financing is necessary to purchase the chips, which have been in short supply in recent years amid the AI boom. AI-computing companies such as CoreWeave have pioneered new financing vehicles secured by Nvidia’s chips and contracts with AI developers to raise billions of dollars for new data centers, something FluidStack said it plans to do as well.

FluidStack said it is in regular contact with Nvidia about the project and has no worries about being able to finance or get access to the chips. “Nvidia has told me that they will send those chips when we need them,” César Maklary, the company’s co-founder and president, said in an interview. Nvidia declined to comment.

The AI project furthers a longtime push from French President Emmanuel Macron, who has sought to expand France’s AI computing power. Last year, he told a closed-door roundtable of executives visiting to discuss investments in France that “low carbon and competitive electricity” is “one of our competitive advantages” for AI.

With a fleet of 57 reactors across 18 plants, France currently produces more than two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear power. France last year produced about a fifth more electricity than it consumed, exporting the rest.

If completed as envisioned, the FluidStack project could tip the balance of AI development toward France and Europe. Some European companies, including France’s Mistral AI, are part of AI’s vanguard, and the continent houses AI labs run by American tech giants that contribute to AI research. But Europe has largely been on the sidelines as big American companies—OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Nvidia among them—led the AI boom.

The FluidStack project aligns with that strategy, alongside another deal between France and the United Arab Emirates, announced on Thursday. Those countries agreed to begin investments with the aim of eventually creating an AI campus in France that would also use a gigawatt of electricity, something French officials said would cost tens of billions of dollars.

Preparing for Trump talks, Beijing starts probe of Google and keeps Apple and Broadcom in its sights

SINGAPORE—Chinese officials are building a list of U.S. technology companies that can be targeted with antitrust probes and other tools, hoping to influence the tech executives who are heavily represented in President Trump’s orbit.

People familiar with Beijing’s strategy said the goal was to collect as many cards as possible to play in expected negotiations with the Trump administration over U.S.-China issues, including the tariffs that Trump has imposed on Chinese goods.

Beijing has already said it is investigating Nvidia and Google over alleged antitrust issues. Other American companies in its sights include Apple, Silicon Valley tech company Broadcom and semiconductor-design software vendor Synopsys, said people familiar with the matter. Synopsys has a $35 billion acquisition awaiting approval by Beijing.

China needs all the leverage it can get to hit back at the U.S., and antitrust is one of the most useful, said Tom Nunlist, a Shanghai-based tech policy specialist at consulting firm Trivium China.

“China is on a chip-gathering exercise,” said Nunlist, likening the countries to poker players. “They want to come to the table to negotiate and need something to play with.”

The strategy carries risks. American companies recently have been less willing than in Trump’s first term to go to bat for China, and the threats could backfire by discouraging companies from investing in the country when that is what Beijing wants.

Beijing has added to its regulatory tools in recent years, drawing lessons from America’s approach. In 2020, it created an “unreliable entity list” of companies—mimicking a U.S. entity list that blocks Chinese technology leader Huawei and others from doing business with Americans. In 2022, China amended its antitrust law to tighten rules on anticompetitive mergers.

Chinese officials hope to get the attention of people in Trump’s world including the executives who sat by his side on inauguration day such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, said people close to Beijing’s policymakers.

Moments after an additional 10% U.S. tariff on Chinese goods took effect Tuesday, China said it had opened an antitrust probe against Google.

China was irked in 2019 when Google, complying with U.S. rules, restricted Huawei from using the Android operating system for mobile devices. Huawei later lost access to Google’s app and other proprietary software and was forced to develop its own operating system.

Another tit-for-tat move came in December, when the Biden administration ratcheted up controls on China’s access to high-end semiconductors. A week later, China said it had started investigating Nvidia, which makes the most powerful chips for developing artificial intelligence, over a merger in 2019.

The probe centers on whether Nvidia discriminated against Chinese companies when it stopped selling them certain products, people familiar with the matter said. U.S. export controls since 2022 restricted Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips to China. Nvidia declined to comment.

Apple has been at odds with Chinese tech companies over its practice of taking a cut when app developers charge for in-app services such as buying tokens to play a game. Tencent, a Chinese videogame leader, and ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, have brought to Apple their concerns that some App Store policies are unfair.

Similar complaints have been scrutinized by regulators around the world. Apple has said its policies ensure the quality and safety of apps.

While Chinese regulators initially watched the commercial dispute from the sidelines, in recent weeks they have taken a closer look, people familiar with the matter said. Some officials view Apple’s charges in China as unreasonably high and believe Apple’s rules governing app payments hinder competition, the people said. As a result, Beijing sees the company as another card it can play in talks with the U.S.

Mergers between multinationals typically require approval from antitrust regulators around the globe, and they can fall apart if they fail to gain even one major-country approval.

In 2018, amid U.S.-China trade conflicts in the first Trump administration, Qualcomm terminated its proposed purchase of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors after failing to obtain clearance from China.

U.S. chip maker Broadcom’s takeover of VMware, valued at $61 billion when it was unveiled in May 2022, was in peril until a meeting between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November 2023. The two leaders agreed to dial down tensions. Shortly afterward, China greenlighted the deal at the 11th hour with conditions, requiring Broadcom to ensure supply to Chinese customers.

China has increasingly attached such conditions to deals, especially semiconductor mergers, meaning the companies remain vulnerable to regulatory action even after the deals close, lawyers say. U.S. chip companies Intel and AMD have had deals approved with conditions in China in the past few years.

“By enforcing strict compliance conditions, Beijing can exert pressure on firms and impose penalties for noncompliance,” said Angela Zhang, a professor at the University of Southern California specializing in Chinese antitrust law.

Still, she said, “Beijing has to be cautious when taking action against U.S. firms, especially those it relies on for critical components like Nvidia.”

One deal in limbo is chip-design software vendor Synopsys’s proposed $35 billion acquisition of engineering software company Ansys. Beijing was unhappy when Synopsys, complying with U.S. export controls, cut off China’s access to some software for designing advanced chips. In December the Chinese antitrust regulator told Synopsys it would suspend its review, citing insufficient materials, people close to the deal said.

A Synopsys spokesperson said the company was confident the review would be resolved favorably and expected the transaction to close in the first half of 2025.

National security is another tool China can use to curtail U.S. companies. In 2023, China banned major Chinese firms from buying from U.S. chip maker Micron Technology, after it said a cybersecurity probe identified national-security risks. The Commerce Department said at the time that the restrictions had no basis in fact.

Justin Hotard, who joined Intel in February last year, is moving to take the top job at European telecom-gear maker Nokia

Intel’s head of data-center and artificial-intelligence operations is leaving the group to take the helm of European telecommunications-gear maker Nokia NOKIA 2.10%increase; green up pointing triangle, the latest high-profile executive shuffle at the chip maker as it struggles to revamp its business.

Justin Hotard, who joined Intel in February last year, will be replacing Pekka Lundmark as Nokia’s chief executive as of April 1.

Hotard previously served as executive vice president and general manager of high-performance computing, AI and labs at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He had been leading efforts at Intel to cash in on AI technology.

The chip maker has lagged behind rivals like Nvidia in the AI race amid a costly turnaround strategy to begin manufacturing chips for other companies. That move has been blamed for ultimately wiping out $150 billion in market value. Intel stock is down more than 55% over the past 12 months.

Pat Gelsinger retired abruptly as Intel’s CEO in December, capping a nearly four-year run that saw the chip maker fall behind rivals. The company named Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, general manager of Intel’s client computing group, as interim co-CEOs. Days later, Intel named two chip industry veterans to its board.

New deal will allow plant to continue operating beyond 2027 but reduces support

The UK has announced new subsidies for Drax, the country’s largest power station, despite a long-running battle over whether the wood pellets it burns for fuel are environmentally sustainable.

Drax said on Monday it had agreed a contract for difference with the government for a minimum electricity price of £113 per megawatt hour between 2027 and 2031.

The deal will mean that Drax, which supplies about 4 per cent of Britain’s electricity, is able to keep the Yorkshire-based biomass power station running when its current subsidy arrangement expires.

In a statement, the government said it had halved Drax’s subsidy and ensured that the plant would play a “much more limited role in the system”. The power station currently runs around two-thirds of the time, but will only “be supported to operate” at a maximum load factor of 27 per cent, running “less than half as often as it currently does”.

Drax’s current subsidies, guaranteed it a price of £132 per megawatt hour in December 2023 according to the group’s most recent annual report. The company’s shares rose 5 per cent in early trading on Monday.

The new deal comes as Drax continues to face scrutiny over the extent to which the wood pellets it burns for fuel are environmentally sustainable, after regulator Ofgem found holes in its supply chain data last year.

On Monday Will Gardiner, Drax’s chief executive, said the subsidies were “an investment in UK energy security” and were cheaper than the cost of building new fossil fuel power stations to back up wind and solar generation. 

“Under this proposed agreement, Drax can step in to increase generation when there is not enough electricity, helping to avoid the need to burn more gas or import power from Europe, and when there is too much electricity on the UK grid, Drax can turn down and help to balance the system,” he said. 

Drax, formerly the UK’s largest coal-fired plant, now burns millions of tonnes of wood pellets. The original subsidies were designed to help it switch from using fossil fuels to biomass.

The extension will allow the plant to remain open while it installs a system to capture its carbon dioxide emissions and store them. That upgrade is expected to take until 2030. 

“Closure of such large-scale biomass plants would hinder their conversion [and] have implications for the UK’s near-term security of supply,” the government said, in a consultation ahead of the decision. 

Biomass accounts for about 11 per cent of power generation in the UK, but its use rests on assurances that the wood involved is from sustainably managed forests with ongoing replanting. The National Audit Office has cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the UK monitoring process.

Last August, Ofgem, the energy regulator, closed a 16-month investigation into Drax by saying the company did not have adequate data on the sustainability of the wood it imported for fuel in 2021-22 and ordered a full independent audit of its supply chain for 2023. Drax agreed to pay £25mn into Ofgem’s voluntary contribution fund in atonement. 

But the regulator said the problems had been “technical in nature” and there was no evidence that Drax’s biomass was unsustainable, or that the company should not have received the £548mn in clean energy subsidies it was paid in 2023.

Can the nuclear industry find a better way to build?

The sector is hopeful that using copies of established reactors can help keep costs down and prevent delays for new projects