The two-day AI Action Summit opened in Paris, bringing together global leaders and major tech companies on Monday. Among the participants are Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, as well as representatives of Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia and Mistral AI.
Representatives from nearly 100 countries and more than a thousand participants from the private sector and civil society have been invited to the summit. French President Emmanuel Macron will host the event, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the event as co-chair of the summit. Other participants include US Vice President J.D. Vance and Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are expected to be among the prominent CEOs.
The current summit promises to be particularly challenging in terms of finding common ground amid rising tensions between the US and China, exacerbated by recent tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. In addition, the development of China’s DeepSeek system has challenged US dominance in AI innovation. As Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, noted, China has become a serious competitor, necessitating a broader global dialogue on the future of artificial intelligence.
The Paris summit emphasised the potential for AI development, from medicine to innovation in the economy. In addition, a discussion on AI regulation in Europe is expected, especially in light of new EU laws.
The summit is also a platform to showcase France’s ambitions to cement its status as a centre for AI development. President Emmanuel Macron said last year that Paris should become the “city of artificial intelligence.”
