France will host the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit with heads of state flocking to Paris to meet global tech leaders. They are likely to announce some big investments and diplomatic deals focused on security or the environmental impact of artificial intelligence.
Before the summit, the early-stage VC firm Galion-exe, the growth investment company Revaia and the consulting firm Chausson Partners have joined together to create the French AI Report which analyzes current trends in the technological ecosystem.
While all eyes are currently on the US and China with OpenAi looking to raise tens of billions of dollars and Speedseek capturing everyone’s attention, there has also been a boom in AI startups in Europe. By 2024 alone, AI companies accounted for around 20% of all VC funding in the region.
In total, that represents about $8 billion in funding for AI startups in 2024. That metric will likely grow rapidly, as AI startups are still relatively young. Seventy percent of the capital raised by AI startups in 2024 was for a seed to Series B round.
European countries that tend to attract VC funding in general have also emerged as major AI investment hubs, with the UK leading the pack, France and Germany following suit, and the Nordics punching above their (demographic) weight. Here’s the breakdown from 2020 to 2024:
Interestingly, as AI companies get larger, they tend to attract international investors, with US venture capital firms accounting for around 50% of the money invested in AI companies in the Series C round and beyond.
In France more specifically, there are “more than 750 new companies that have created 35,000 jobs and operate in all the areas that are transforming today's society,” said Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies Clara Chappaz at a press conference.
He also mentioned that there are 2.000 scientists focused on AI research and 600 PhD students working on artificial intelligence. And you may have noticed that there are also quite a few French engineers and researchers working for AI companies in the United States.
The team behind the French AI report took a closer look at the 400 AI startups in France and tried to identify the rising stars. While Mistral AI and Poolside are already familiar names to readers who have followed the AI industry, the vast majority of AI startups are not working on the next foundation model.
On the infrastructure front, some companies are optimizing data workflows and pipelines, such as Linkup and Kestra, or improving inference performance, such as ZML or developing agents that can sift through large data sets and improve productivity. Dust is a good example of that.
But the reality is that most AI startups in France are focusing on applications for specific verticals. According to this report, two important areas for AI startups in France are health and climate.
Owkin and his spin-off biotech company Bioptimus have led the pack on the health technology front, but it's a surprisingly diverse group of companies with three broad areas of focus: imaging tools, drug discovery and improving medical treatment.
Similarly, while a large part of the AI industry is focused on productivity gains for office workers, AI is also being actively used to build the next generation of climate startups. In addition to agritech, carbon and energy management, two related topics, seem to be a big focus. There are also a handful of promising materials startups emerging (Altrove, for example).
All companies included in the list It can be found hereThere are also many other AI companies that work on a job function (sales, customer service, HR or legal) and use AI to simplify the most common tasks.
Of course, some companies won’t be around in five years. But many of them are currently growing at a rapid pace. We’re still at the beginning of the AI revolution, and while it’s easy to think of the AI industry as a zero-sum game with one country or company “winning” over the others, it seems that the rise of AI is more distributed than expected.
