France Drops Palantir, Pledges €655M for Sovereign AI

What did France announce about AI investment on June 16?

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced €655 million ($760 million) in additional public AI investment through 2030. He made the announcement in a social media video on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. The spending is aimed at building France's own AI capabilities rather than relying on foreign providers.

Why is France's DGSI dropping Palantir?

The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI) is France's domestic intelligence agency. It will end its contract with Palantir, the American data analytics company. Lecornu said France cannot "accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere," according to France 24.

The decision follows Washington's move last week to cut off non-American users from Anthropic's Fable AI model. Lecornu said France should "not depend on the good will of certain partners, who are capable of turning off the access tap" for AI. The Fable cutoff is directly linked to the Palantir decision in Lecornu's public statement.

If you've been following the Anthropic Fable ban, this French response is the clearest government action it has triggered so far.

Who is Palantir, and why does it matter here?

Palantir is a US data analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel, a right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire close to President Donald Trump. The company was founded with support from the CIA. It provides data processing services to governments and large companies, helping them surface useful information from large datasets.

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Palantir has worked with the US government on identifying undocumented immigrants and on targeting in the US-Israel war on Iran. Campaign groups have warned its products raise risks around mass surveillance, individual freedoms, and data protection. Palantir says it simply provides powerful data tools.

Palantir's French arm did not respond to AFP's request for comment on Tuesday.

What triggered the push for AI sovereignty in France?

The immediate trigger was Washington cutting off access to Anthropic's Fable model for non-American users last week. That move prompted calls for greater AI independence from candidates across the French political spectrum ahead of next year's presidential election.

Here's what we know so far: the Fable incident acted as a concrete example of exactly the risk Lecornu described — a foreign government effectively switching off access to a critical AI tool. The broader concern about AI trading warning signals and tech dependency has been building across Europe for months.

What has happened with Palantir in other countries?

France is not alone. British lawmakers earlier this month called for the UK's National Health Service (NHS) to end its own Palantir contract. A parliamentary report from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said "reliance on a small number of US-based providers represents a clear vulnerability" that could leave public services "at the mercy of foreign actors."

The London mayor's office also blocked a bid by the Metropolitan Police to work with Palantir, as France 24 reported.

Key facts at a glance

What else is included in France's AI plan?

Beyond dropping Palantir, Lecornu's announcement includes broader steps to develop sovereign AI tools. Ouest-France reports that the plan involves making sovereign AI tools available to French civil servants. The generalization of these tools across the public sector is listed as one of the key advances in the investment package.

This is part of a wider European pattern. As OpenAI's IPO filing and other US AI milestones draw attention, European governments are increasingly asking how much control they actually have over the AI tools their agencies depend on.

What did Infobae report about the French investment figure?

Infobae confirmed the €655 million figure, citing the EFE news agency. The announcement came from Prime Minister Lecornu on Tuesday, June 16. The investment is described as additional funding on top of existing AI commitments, running through 2030.

For builders and founders tracking Perplexity CEO hybrid AI strategies and sovereign compute trends, France's move is a concrete policy data point — a G7 government publicly naming US AI dependency as a national security issue and backing that position with a nine-figure spending commitment.

The confirmed next step: France's DGSI will end its Palantir contract, and the €655 million investment program runs through 2030.