(19459046)
In a few short days, France will be hosting the
Artificial Intelligence Action Summitis a meeting of global tech leaders in Paris. They’ll likely announce big investments and diplomatic deals focused on safety or environmental impact of artificial intelligent.
Early-stage VC firm ahead of the summit
Galion.exe, growth investment firm
Revaiais a consulting firm.
Chausson Partners created the
French AI Reportexamines the current trends within the tech industry.
While the U.S., China, and OpenAI are grabbing everyone’s attention with their efforts to raise tens or hundreds of billions in funding and DeepSeek, there is a boom of AI startups in Europe. AI companies accounted for around 20% of the VC funding in Europe by 2024.
This represents around $8 billion of funding for AI startups by 2024. This metric will likely grow rapidly as AI startups are relatively young. Seventy percent (2024) of the capital raised by AI startup companies was for a Series B to Seed round.
European nations that tend to attract VC funds in general have become the main AI hubs. The U.K. leads the group, France, Germany, and the Nordics are following, and the Nordics are outperforming their demographic weight. Here’s a breakdown of the 2020-2024 period:
Interestingly, as AI companies become bigger, they tend to attract international investors, with U.S. VC firms accounting for around 50% of money invested in AI companies at the Series C round and later.
In France more specifically, there are “more than 750 startups that have created 35,000 jobs and operate in all areas that are transforming today’s society,” Minister Delegate for artificial intelligence and digital technologies Clara Chappaz said at a press conference.
She also mentioned that there are 2,000 scientists focused on AI research and 600 doctorate students working on artificial intelligence. And you may have noticed that there are quite a few French engineers and researchers working for AI companies in the U.S., too.
The team behind the French AI Report looked more closely at the top 400 AI startups in France and tried to identify the rising stars. While Mistral AI and Poolside are already some familiar names for readers who have followed the AI industry, the vast majority of AI startups aren’t working on the next foundation model.
On the infrastructure front, some companies are optimizing the data workflows and pipelines, such as Linkup and Kestra, or improving inference performance, such as
ZMLor developing agents which can sift large data sets to improve productivity. Dust is an example.
But the reality is that most AI startups in France are focusing on applications for specific verticals. Based on this report, two important areas for AI startups in France are health and climate.
Owkin and its spin-off biotech company Bioptimus have been leading the pack on the health tech front, but it’s a surprisingly diverse group of companies with three big areas of interest: imaging tools, drug discovery, and medical treatment improvement.
Similarly, while a large chunk of the AI industry is focused on productivity gains for office workers, artificial intelligence is also actively being used to build the next-generation of climate startups. In addition to agritech, carbon and energy management — two topics that are related — seem to be a big focus. There are also a handful of promising new materials companies that are emerging (Altrove, for instance).
All the companies included in the list
You can find out more here. You’ll find AI companies that specialize in one job function, such as sales, customer service, HR, or legal, and use AI to simplify common tasks.
Some companies won’t be around in five years. Many of them are growing rapidly at the moment. We are still at the dawn of the AI revolution. And while it’s easy for us to think that the AI industry is a zero-sum competition where one country or company “wins” over the rest, it appears the AI boom has been more widely distributed than expected.
Romain is a Senior Journalist at TechCrunch. He has written more than 3,000 articles about technology and tech startups, and has become a prominent voice in the European tech scene. He has a background in startups, privacy and security, blockchain, mobile, media, social, and fintech. He has twelve years’ experience at TechCrunch and is one of the familiar faces that cover Silicon Valley and the technology industry. His career began at TechCrunch in 2001, when he was just 21 years old. Many people in the Paris tech ecosystem regard him as the best tech journalist in the city. Romain is known for spotting important startups ahead of others. He was the first to cover N26 Revolut, DigitalOcean. He has covered large acquisitions by Apple, Microsoft, and Snap. Romain is a developer when he’s unable to write. He knows how the technology behind the tech works. He has a thorough understanding of the history of the computer industry over the last 50 years. He is able to make the connection between the impact of innovations on our society and their origin. Romain graduated from Emlyon Business School – a leading French school that specializes in entrepreneurship. He has worked with several non-profits, including StartHer, which promotes the empowerment of women through technology, and Techfugees.
View Bio
