Paris, France
Today, the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, concluded a successful visit to Paris, France, where he met with key industry and political leaders to advance Canada's growth agenda.
Minister Solomon led the Canadian delegation for the opening of the 9th edition of VivaTech. He welcomed President Emmanuel Macron to the Canada Pavilion on the first day of the conference and showcased some of Canada's leading innovators to the French delegation. At President Macron's invitation, Minister Solomon later participated in a working dinner with French business leaders at the Élysée Palace.
Minister Solomon participated in Montréal-based company Hypertec's announcement of a $5 billion initiative to build one of Europe's largest sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure networks, with over 2 gigawatts of data centre capacity and nearly 100,000 NVIDIA graphics processing units planned in France, Italy, Portugal and the U.K. This initiative demonstrates Canadian leadership on the world stage and will translate to a $250 million investment by the company in Quebec to build next-generation server facilities and create over 100 specialized jobs in AI-related fields.
Over the course of his visit, Minister Solomon held bilateral discussions with Clara Chappaz, Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies from France; Lex Delles, Minister of the Economy, SME, Energy and Tourism from Luxembourg; and His Excellency Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of the Economy from the United Arab Emirates. Their discussions reflected Canada's commitment to develop collaborative research and development initiatives, to facilitate and accelerate the commercialization of Canadian products and services, and to build additional compute infrastructure in Canada.
In focused discussions with political and business leaders, including with Jay Puri, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations at NVIDIA, Minister Solomon advanced key Canadian AI and digital priorities, including scaling our companies and ecosystems, unlocking productivity through technology adoption, fueling trust in a digital economy, and pursuing Canadian digital sovereign capabilities.
As the Country of the Year, Canada greatly expanded its footprint at VivaTech with a Canada Pavilion of 500 square metres and a business delegation of over 230 Canadian companies. This showcase highlighted the innovation of Canadian companies and the maturity of Canada's AI ecosystem and reinforced its reputation as a world leader in AI. The 2025 Canadian presence and business delegation was spearheaded by Scale AI, one of Canada's global innovation clusters.
The Canada Pavilion offered a nexus for Canadian companies to feature their technology and success and to pursue the trade diversification Canada needs for its products and companies. The world was introduced to Canadian innovators like Airudi, CGI, Cohere, Farpoint Technologies, IVADO Labs, Mappedin, Pontosense, Trusting Pixels, Videns and Vooban.
As AI continues to shape our world in new and unexpected ways, the Government of Canada seeks to harness AI's opportunities, mitigate its risks and foster trust. With strategic government investments and support for responsible AI adoption, Canada will grow its AI ecosystem and enhance productivity across the country.
