VEDA WORLD NEWS | PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON & SOFTBANK GROUP CEO MASAYOSHI SON FIVE-GIGAWATT AI DEAL

And then he asked me, 'Masa, can you do something in France? Choose France for your expansion of business and technology, especially AI data center. Can use our power in France.' I said, 'Okay, if you have power, we can make an AI data center.' And he asked me, 'Masa, are you quick?' I said, 'I am quick,' because he asked me because there's an event on June 1st, Choose France event. It's only two months. So can you make it happen? Can we announce something on June 1st? I said, 'Okay, I would try.' And he asked me, 'How much can you do?' I said, 'I can try for two gigawatts, but I need your support.' So he said, 'Yeah, okay, let's do it together.' Your team, our team work together to find the locations, to find all the conditions, and then we make it happen. And then we exchanged texts and said maybe I can go for a challenge for five gigawatts. In two months, we actually identified, committed, and made a specific site already secured for three gigawatts, and then we are now evaluating an additional three gigawatts. So we are going to commit to deliver five gigawatts, which is the largest scale in Europe, which is 75 billion euro in the size of investment for the AI data center. But if you include the chips and systems, it's going to be close to $750 billion in the size. I have to convert into euro, but it's a massive size of investment coming. SoftBank do not put all of the money. We are aggregating. We do the project financing because we have hyperscalers as our customers. So even though the size of the investment is big, it's a growing industry with lots of demand, so that this scale can be achieved. We are doing that in the US already. We are expanding a lot in the US. So we have the model, we have the momentum, which we can make France the center of Europe. And Europe needs this kind of AI technology. I get amazed every time I come to Europe. The last thousands of years of civilization centered in Europe. I think people discuss whether AI is good, robotics by AI is good or bad for humanity. I said every time civilization comes, the society, lifestyle change, the job change. But if you avoid the speed and the wave of civilization, your country would be left out. There's no choice. US is going fast. China is going fast. Europe, Japan, Asia have to also go fast not to be left out. This is a national security. France has been exporting electricity power. Now, not just exporting, continue to export electricity power. We can convert electricity as a raw material into more high-valued intelligence. So France can export intelligence, not just a power export. Export intelligence which is made by power, initiated by power, more value-added export. AI utilizing robots, AI robots. France can be—we discussed in the morning—President Macron has a passion with the AI robots. I said, 'Okay, maybe we can make France the center of AI robots, exporting, manufacturing, creating a factory here in France.' This is all for the civilization of the next thousand years. France, Europe have to have momentum and a powerful engine for the growth of the next civilization. Thank you very much.