Masayoshi Son broke ground on a former uranium enrichment site in Piketon, Ohio, in March, to launch what SoftBank called the world’s largest artificial intelligence data centre.
Ten weeks later, Son announced a €75 billion investment in AI data centres across northern France alongside Emmanuel Macron, the largest such commitment in European history.
SoftBank had already put more than $30 billion into OpenAI, recording investment gains of $45 billion in the year ended March 2026. The group also held roughly 90% of Arm Holdings, whose chip architectures underpin most global AI servers.
By 1 June, SoftBank overtook Toyota as Japan’s most valuable publicly traded company. The group has spent years assembling three interlocking positions across AI infrastructure, and France is the latest extension of that architecture.
The Iran war has divided European electricity markets into winners and losers. France now holds a nuclear price advantage that makes SoftBank’s investment, in geographic terms, a rational large bet in Europe’s AI race.
The Anatomy of a Platform Bet
SoftBank’s position in AI spans three levels. Its 90% stake in Arm Holdings covers the chip architectures running inside most global AI servers. Its 11% stake in OpenAI covers the world’s most-used frontier model. Its SB Energy subsidiary builds and operates the physical data centre campuses.
The Ohio complex, a 10-gigawatt facility on federally owned land, draws power from a dedicated $33 billion natural gas fleet already under procurement.
The French investment adds 5 gigawatts of European capacity by 2031, with sites in Dunkirk, Bosquel and Bouchain. Schneider Electric will co-develop a manufacturing cluster in Dunkirk, and state utility Électricité de France, or EDF, will partner on the Bouchain site.
Son told a French publication that France’s status as a producer and exporter of energy was “absolutely decisive” for AI infrastructure spending.
The Iran Fault Line
The war with Iran disrupted global energy markets at a speed that most European planning had not anticipated. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz removed roughly 20% of the world’s oil trade from the market.
The resulting price surge compounded with structural grid congestion to produce a second acute energy shock in four years. By May, industrial electricity in the United Kingdom ran at $111.65 per megawatt-hour, Germany at $88.97, France at $44.19 and the United States at $28.
France’s relative insulation traces to 57 nuclear reactors operated by EDF, generating roughly 70% of national electricity. Nuclear generation prices track reactor construction economics, insulating industrial consumers from commodity market swings.
Electricity expenditure accounts for 30–50% of a data centre’s total operating budget. A gap of that magnitude between French and British industrial electricity prices determines where new compute capital flows.
Olivier Darmouni, associate professor at HEC Paris specialising in the energy transition, noted that France holds a “huge advantage” in European electricity pricing. Darmouni also observed that the Iran crisis had elevated energy supply to a question of economic sovereignty.
What Son’s Record Tells
Top economists warn that AI infrastructure investment is inflating a bubble, and that the Ohio Stargate campus risks becoming a half-trillion-dollar white elephant.
Masayoshi Son does not agree. In a recent interview, Son predicted that Artificial Super Intelligence, or ASI, will account for 10% of global gross domestic product within 15 years, rising to 30% over 30 years.
Son’s investment record spans both the extraordinary and the catastrophic. His $20 million bet on Alibaba in 2000 produced returns approaching $200 billion at their peak. His Vision Fund poured more than $10 billion into WeWork, an investment that ended in bankruptcy in 2023.
Son also sold SoftBank’s entire Nvidia position in 2019 for $3.3 billion, and the same shares had grown to a value exceeding $150 billion by 2024.
In the year ended March 2026, SoftBank posted the highest quarterly profit a Japanese company had ever reported.
Structural Bets for a Structural Advantage
The French project requires regulatory approvals, land agreements and grid connections across three sites over five years, within a country whose administrative procedures have historically slowed large infrastructure projects.
The Ohio campus carries additional uncertainty, with no disclosed customers. The WeWork collapse and the premature Nvidia sale established Masayoshi Son’s execution as historically uneven.
Among European markets, France has benefited most from the Iran energy shock, which has amplified its nuclear price advantage over gas-dependent neighbours. That advantage predates the conflict; the conflict has made it commercially decisive.
Son has sometimes correctly identified where infrastructure capital generates the greatest returns over a decade, even in the absence of flawless execution. France, on the available evidence, ranks among the more defensible locations for large-scale AI infrastructure investment in Europe.
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