Amazon plans to invest more than €1.2 billion in its French operations and create more than 3,000 permanent jobs in the country.
The French presidency said last weekend that Amazon and other companies, including GSK and Accenture, would announce investments worth billions as part of the country's annual 'Choose France' event, which began on Monday.
Amazon Web Services' (AWS) investment would increase cloud infrastructure in the Paris area to support France's flourishing generative AI opportunity, and logistics infrastructure in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the company said in a statement.
Increased popularity of GenAI has been fuelling demand for cloud services, and France has become a hub for AI, with promising startups such as Mistral and Poolside. Companies such as Meta and Google have set up AI research centres in the country.
France Investment
Amazon has invested more than €20 billion in its French operations since 2010 and employs more than 22,000 permanent employees across its cloud and online retail businesses.
"These jobs are in addition to the 2,000 jobs we announced for 2024," said Frédéric Duval, country manager at Amazon France.
Part of the investment would also be used to expand its logistics network to increase speed of delivery and reduce carbon emissions. Amazon has more than 35 logistics facilities in France.
Electric Trucks
Last week, in the US, Amazon unveiled the first of a dozen Volvo electric big rigs it plans to deploy this year to pick up cargo from the nation's busiest container seaport in Southern California.
The e-commerce giant already has eight of those semi trucks in use at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, where every so-called drayage truck must be zero-emissions by 2035.
The deployment is a first for Amazon, extending its vehicle electrification projects from ocean ports to customer doorsteps. The effort is vital to the company's push to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Additional reporting by ESM
