French shipping and logistics company CMA CGM has signed a partnership with Alphabet's Google to speed up deployment of AI solutions across its operations worldwide, the two companies announced on Thursday.

CMA CGM aims to increase efficiency and shorten delivery times through the optimisation of routes, container handling, and inventory management, while minimising costs and carbon emissions.

CMA CGM's Chairman and CEO Rodolphe Saadé called the partnership a "crucial step" in his company's transformation strategy.

Google France CEO Sébastien Missoffe said Google's "infrastructure, data expertise, and long-term approach to AI" would help CMA CGM to grow.

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CEVA Logistics, the group's logistics arm, will use Goole AI-based management tools to better predict and plan operations at its warehouses through volume and demand forecasting.

CMA CGM's media arm, which owns a stake in French private broadcaster M6 and bought France's leading rolling news channel BFM TV earlier this year, will aim to create tools helping its journalists to synthesise and translate documents, generate media snippets for social networks, facilitate archives digitisation and research.