France To Spend $8.4 Billion on Digital as Part of Stimulus Plan

The French government unveiled a massive $120 billion stimulus package earlier this week to recover from the economic downturn — it represents 4% of the country’s GDP. As part of this support plan, the government plans to spend a significant chunk of money on all things digital — startup investment, infrastructure investment and digital transformation. From a report: I interviewed France’s digital minister Cedric O earlier today to get some details on how it’s going to work. Overall, France will spend $8.4 billion on digital investments. This is a new investment plan for the next two years. It’s different from the economic rescue plan that was rolled out earlier this year. That one was designed as a stopgap for the early days of the economic crisis. “With 7 billion euro, I think the digital sector is the sector that is receiving the biggest investment overall compared to all other sectors except the environmental sector,” Cedric O said. Ten years ago, the French government launched an investment program dedicated to innovation, from scientific research to R&D spendings. The government is launching the fourth iteration of this program (Programme d’investissements d’avenir). It’s a $13 billion investment plan (11 billion euro) and it covers a ton of stuff. But nearly $1 billion (800 million euro) will be dedicated to state aid for French startups over the next couple of years.