Billionaires Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saad and Eric Schmidt announced a new non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research lab in Paris, marking France's latest push to develop sovereign AI technology.

Eir owner Xavier Niel's Iliad and Saad's container shipping giant CMA CGM will each invest €100m, the two businessmen said on a panel of the AI-Pulse conference in Paris yesterday. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, also present at the event, will invest an undisclosed amount via Schmidt Ventures.

The lab, called kyutai, will have €300m in total funding and produce open-source research, the investors said. Some of its scientists previously worked for Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms.

France is looking for ways to get a foothold in AI as countries race to harness the emerging technology for economic growth and influence. US tech giants such as Microsoft., Google and Amazon, are investing billions of dollars into developing AI, dwarfing European efforts.

Niel and Saad are both seed investors in France's buzzy Mistral AI, a generative artificial intelligence startup founded this year which in September released its first large language model.

They also invested in Poolside AI, whose American founders chose Paris as their base.

CMA CGM, which is grappling with a slump in the shipping industry, plans to use AI to optimise its operations, HR and customer relations tools, a spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg.

Yesterday's conference included several scientists who had been hired by the new lab. The group includes former Valeo SA science director Patrick Perez, former Neil Zeghidour and Laurent Mazare – formerly of Google's DeepMind – and Hervé Jégou, Edouard Grave and Alexandre Defossez, who are Meta alumni.

Reporting On: www.independent.ie