OpenAI chief Sam Altman is scheduled to attend the G7 meeting in France later this month, CNBC has learned, as President Emmanuel Macron ramps up efforts to woo technology leaders around the world to support the country’s AI ambitions.
France is hosting the 2026 G7 meeting (an annual meeting of heads of state or government) from June 15th to 17th, and AI is expected to feature heavily on the agenda.
OpenAI exclusively told CNBC that Altman was invited by Macron to participate in the Leaders’ Summit, and this will be his first time attending. “The expectation is that he will participate in the G7 leadership dialogue,” Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC.
The G7 meeting will include the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the EU.
Mr. Macron has recently been on a charm offensive with leaders of technology companies.
SoftBank announced over the weekend that it plans to invest 45 billion euros ($53 billion) over the next five years in building AI infrastructure in France. This came after Macron personally courted founder and CEO Masayoshi Son.
SoftBank’s chief executive officer told CNBC on Monday that the French president had requested a meeting with Son and then requested that the company build a data center in France. Son added that the two “exchanged texts” as they hammered out the details of the deal.
OpenAI expects tech companies to reach a series of “voluntary commitments” during the summit, Lehane said.
“Sam’s main priority at the G7 is the safety of young people, but the broader point is that AI has moved from being a futuristic discussion to governing reality,” he added. At the end of May, G7 digital ministers agreed on a joint approach to protecting children online.
OpenAI’s other main focus area at the conference will be frontier AI risks, particularly those related to “cyber and bio,” Lehane said.
Recent announcements of powerful AI models with advanced cyber capabilities, such as Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber, have led to a wave of concerns from businesses and governments over weaknesses in digital security.
OpenAI aims to establish itself as a key partner for governments, including by launching the “OpenAI for Countries” initiative in 2025.
As part of the announcement, the company said it will partner with countries to build data center capacity and roll out ChatGPT to their citizens. OpenAI announced in December that former British Prime Minister George Osborne would lead the program.
Macron is aiming to strengthen France’s AI infrastructure, with billions of dollars of investment pledged by technology and data center companies at the recent annual business summit Choose France.
As part of the event, it was announced that UAE fund MGX and French public investment bank Bpifrance will invest €7.5 billion in a new AI campus in France. sales force It also plans to invest 2 billion euros in France.
google In response to inquiries from CNBC, he declined to comment on whether senior leaders would attend the G7 meeting. Anthropic told CNBC there was “no confirmation” about whether CEO Dario Amodei plans to attend. The Elysée Palace, the French presidential residence in Paris, was contacted for comment.
