GoKawiilOpenAI chief Sam Altman will be attending the G7 conference in France later this month, CNBC has learned, as President Emmanuel Macron steps up efforts to court tech leaders across the globe in support of the country's AI ambitions.
France is hosting 2026's G7 conference — an annual meeting of heads of state or government — from June 15-17, with AI expected to feature prominently on the agenda.
Altman was invited by Macron to participate in the Leaders Summit, OpenAI told CNBC exclusively, in what would be the first time he's attended. "The expectation is that he will be engaging in the leaders-level conversation at the G7," Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC.
The G7 conference will feature the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU.
Macron has recently been on a charm offensive with tech leaders.
Over the weekend, SoftBank said it planned to invest 45 billion euros ($53 billion) over the next five years to build AI infrastructure in France. This came after Macron personally courted the founder and CEO Masayoshi Son.
The French president requested a meeting with Son and then asked him to build a data center in France, the SoftBank CEO told CNBC on Monday. Son added that the two "exchang[ed] texts" as they hashed out the details of the deal.