Everything you need to know about the AI Action Summit

On February 10 and 11, Paris will host an international summit on artificial intelligence. With this major event, France and Europe aim to position themselves as competitors to the United States and China. Here's the complete guide to make sure you don't miss a thing.

Temps de lecture : 6 minutes

After two days dedicated to scientific debates at Saclay Plateau, followed by two cultural days in Paris to raise public awareness, the AI Action Summit will officially begins today at the Grand Palais in Paris. Heads of state and tech company leaders from around the world are in the French capital for this occasion.

This summit comes at a particular moment as 2025 began with a bang in AI, with major announcements that have reshuffled the global dynamics of the sector. The United States made the first move with the $500B Stargate plan announced by Donald Trump, alongside leaders from OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, before China responded a few days later with DeepSeek, which made a spectacular breakthrough by unveiling an AI as effective as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost.

It is in this special atmosphere, where the race for AI seems at a crossroads, that the AI Action Summit opens in Paris. The event is co-chaired by Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "We want this summit to be an opportunity for a global conversation on artificial intelligence. We don’t want it to be just a conversation between the US and China. We intend to make the voice of France and Europe heard, as well as the voices of all other countries directly involved," stated the Élysée.

The Grand Palais, the Summit's Nerve Centre

The success of this summit will largely take place at the Grand Palais. Under the dome of this iconic venue, which hosted the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, conferences, roundtables, and presentations showcasing AI-driven solutions will be held on February 10 to fuel the discussions among the thousand participants from all over the world. Topics such as AI in the future of work, cyberattacks and misinformation, AI governance, AI for the public good, the risks of AI, and building trustworthy AI will be addressed under the Grand Palais dome.

Numerous key figures in AI will participate, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, and Éléonore Crespo, co-founder of Pigment. Also present will be Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, Clément Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, Fidji Simo, CEO of Instacart, and Aude Durand, deputy CEO of Iliad Group. Notably, Xavier Niel (Iliad), Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM), and Eric Schmidt (former Google), founders of the Kyutai lab, have also confirmed their participation. Several French startups, including Alan, Photoroom, Dataiku, Dust, H, Doctolib, Owkin, Unseenlabs, Pasqal, and Quandela, will also be showcased.

In terms of political figures, numerous leaders will be present. In addition to Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, participants will include US Vice President J.D. Vance, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Macron to close the first day

This morning, Anne Bouverot, the President’s special envoy for the event, will have the honour of officially opening the summit, alongside Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University. Following this, discussions covering all aspects of AI (political, economic, societal, cultural...) will begin in various spaces of the Grand Palais.

The day will end with demonstrations by Patrick Pérez, the researcher leading Kyutai who just revealed his simultaneous translation model Hibiki, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, John Elkann, president of Stellantis, and Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, who announced the construction of the first data centre in France. Finally, Emmanuel Macron will deliver his closing speech at 5:30 PM, marking the end of the first day of the summit. The evening will conclude with a dinner at the Élysée with key AI figures and heads of state attending the event.

The fate of the Summit will be decided on Tuesday morning

The second and final day of the summit, Tuesday, February 11, will be crucial. A plenary session, also at the Grand Palais, will take place in the morning to bring together heads of state and government, as well as international figures. They will discuss major collective actions to be implemented in AI.

A global charter for sustainable AI could be developed at the end of the summit. Many aspects of this event echo a climate COP, but in an AI version. "The president is once again taking the lead in re-establishing links in a fragmented international community, where we are seeing a growing divide on digital issues between a few actors leading the way and others who, overall, are watching from the sidelines, with a strong risk of feelings of disenfranchisement and abandonment within a large part of the international community," commented the Élysée.

For the record, Emmanuel Macron made a major announcement on Sunday evening, revealing a €109B investment in AI "over the coming years." This package includes the €30 to 50B promised by the UAE to build a giant data centre and the €20B pledged by the Canadian Brookfield fund for new data centre projects.

A "Business Day" at Station F on Tuesday

While heads of state try to align their positions under the Grand Palais dome on Tuesday morning, a "Business Day" will be held at Station F in parallel. Over 6,000 actors (startups, SMEs, large companies...) are expected at the incubator site led by Roxanne Varza. This will be an opportunity to showcase use cases, reflect on AI adoption, and, of course, do business.

Roundtable discussions will punctuate the day, and startups will present their innovations at their booths to investors from around the world. Attendees at the "Business Day" are expected to be visited by Emmanuel Macron in the afternoon. The president will "tour" Station F, according to the President's services. This will be an opportunity for Macron to gauge the vitality of the ecosystem during the summit and to reignite ties with entrepreneurs, a relationship that has suffered recently. According to a study published last December, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs no longer trust Emmanuel Macron. AI could therefore serve as a lever to rebuild this connection.

The summit will end on Tuesday with an evening at Station F organised in partnership with OpenAI, Hugging Face, and H, three major AI players. This will provide a festive conclusion to this major AI event. The question remains whether this event will have a long-term impact or if it will be a flash in the pan. However, given the early announcements, both in terms of businesses such as Mistral AI and Kyutai and political promises for new data centres in France, there is hope for meaningful outcomes.