According to Cointelegraph, French telecommunications group Iliad announced plans to invest millions in the local French artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The company has already invested €100 million ($106 million) towards the creation of an 'excellence lab' in Paris dedicated to AI research. A team of renowned researchers has been set up, led by Iliad chairman Xavier Niel.

In addition to the lab, Iliad has acquired an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, which it claims is 'the most powerful cloud-native AI supercomputer deployed to date in Europe.' The supercomputer has been installed at the company's Datacenter 5 near Paris. Iliad subsidiary Scaleway now plans to offer its clients access to a full suite of cloud-native AI tools, such as the ability to train various-sized models. This move comes after the European Union announced an initiative to help AI startups with accelerated access to supercomputers in Europe.