Summary

• This note proposes the Prometheus Plan: a three-year project for France and its partners to build a frontier AI lab able to compete with the best American labs, in order to secure their strategic independence.

Breaking free from AI dependency demands an unprecedented effort

• In an economy irrigated by large language models, not producing one's own flows of artificial intelligence means depending on others for a growing share of one's productivity, industrial power and security.

• France today has no frontier model (the highest tier of capability), and the recent American export controls on Anthropic's best models illustrate the danger of this situation.

• No lab of that rank will emerge organically: it takes a deliberate effort by the state.

• France is the only power, outside the United States and China, that meets the conditions to become the third nation of the frontier, provided it makes this a first-order national priority.

The technical objective

• Aim for 12 GW of compute in 2029, in Blackwell equivalents (trajectory: 2 GW in 2027, 7 GW in 2028, 12 GW in 2029), the level of the large American labs.

• Attract the world's best researchers within a lean team (1,700 people).

• Be able, by 2029, to train models at the frontier.

The cost

• €148bn from 2027, €271bn in 2029, a cumulative total of around €620bn over three years. Compute concentrates most of the cost (95%).

• That represents 4.5 to 8% of French GDP, of which 1.5% of public investment per year: an effort on a historic scale.

The proposed architecture

• We propose to distinguish two blocks:

• An autonomous scientific lab, in which the state would hold only a minority stake (25%) while keeping instruments of strategic control.

• A vast infrastructure programme (compute, energy, land), steered by the public authorities, backed by a derogatory “Prometheus Act” to accelerate procedures and by a financial programming component.

The coalition

• Led by France, with clearly assumed leadership made credible by its financial commitment.

• Open to partners (European, but also South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Emirates, Canada, Australia…) who contribute to the financing in exchange for guaranteed access to compute and to the models.

Main sticking points

• Beyond the sheer enormity of the cost, the second difficulty lies in chip supply, and therefore in the initial dependence on Nvidia and on the American administration.

The strategic conclusion

• The cheaper alternatives (betting on open source, or negotiating an interdependence with the United States and China) offer no guarantee of real autonomy.

• The decisive question therefore remains: are the defenders of French sovereignty prepared to pay the price?