SoftBank's €75 Billion France Bet Reflects Confidence in Long-Term AI Growth

SoftBank committed €75 billion to build 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in France, with 3.1 gigawatts operational by 2031. The investment suggests the company believes AI demand will expand significantly for decades, justifying building capacity now rather than waiting. This approach mirrors how cloud providers built excess infrastructure early in the last decade, betting—correctly—that companies would eventually migrate workloads at scale.