\n<\/p>\n
Last night, Motier<\/a><\/span> Ventures held a tech meetup<\/a> focused on AI startups featuring some of the most hyped tech startups in the French tech ecosystem, Dust, Finegrain, Gladia, Mistral AI and Scenario \u2014 all of them are portfolio companies of Motier Ventures. And you could feel a sense of excitement both on stage and in the audience.<\/p>\n Artificial intelligence, just like in the U.S., has quickly become a buzzy vertical within the French tech industry. But this time, France seems particularly well positioned to become one of the main AI hubs of the world.<\/p>\n And it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise. Tech giants have historically set up AI research labs in Paris as there\u2019s a large talent pool of PhD students in math, computer science and engineering. They usually graduate from Polytechnique, ENS or Inria. They sometimes move to the U.S. for postdoctoral research and then move back to France to join a research lab.<\/p>\n For instance, Facebook (now Meta) created its Paris research lab back in 2015<\/a> with Yann Le Cun at the helm of the AI initiative \u2014 this research group is called FAIR, for Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research. Google followed suit<\/a> with its own AI research center dedicated to AI in Paris.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FAIR team is extremely impressive. Just look at what they\u2019ve done with Llama,\u201d an entrepreneur told me yesterday. He recently had a private meeting with some of the engineers and scientists working on AI projects.<\/p>\n And if you look at the founders of Mistral AI<\/a>, the French AI startup working on open-source large language models that raised a \u20ac105 million seed round<\/a> ($112 million at today\u2019s exchange rate), all three co-founders Arthur Mensch, Timoth\u00e9e Lacroix and Guillaume Lample previously worked at Google\u2019s DeepMind or FAIR.<\/p>\n Last night, Mistral\u2019s co-founders put together a demo of Mistral AI in a ChatGPT-like interface called Mistral AI Chat. The demo was based on new model called \u201cmistral-70b-instruct-alpha01\u201d, indicating that the team is actively working on a new model with more parameters so that it can be more competitive with sophisticated LLMs. According to a recent report from The Information<\/a>, Mistral AI plans to raise as much as $300 million in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n Mistral isn\u2019t the only high-profile AI company in France. Poolside, a company that recently raised a $126 million seed round<\/a>, plans to use AI to make it drastically easier to write code. Co-founded by Jason Warner, the former CTO of GitHub, and Eiso Kant, a serial entrepreneur who worked on Athenian and source{d}, the company has picked Paris as its home base.<\/p>\n Dust<\/a>, a company that is working on integrating large language models with internal corporate data<\/a> from GitHub, Notion or Slack, also took the stage for a demo last night. At Dust\u2019s office warming party, I realized that Dust shares its beautiful office building with Nabla<\/a>, another French AI startup focused on helping doctors leverage large language models and co-founded by former FAIR engineers. This proves once again that an AI ecosystem is emerging.<\/p>\n The founders of Mistral AI and Dust had to leave the meetup quickly after their demos as they were both invited for dinner at the Elys\u00e9e Palace, the residence of Emmanuel Macron. So there\u2019s also some public support for AI startups in France. An entrepreneur recently told me that multiple AI startups are working together on public tenders for government grants worth millions of euros as part of France 2030.<\/p>\n One thing that might differentiate European AI startups from AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic is that they\u2019re thinking about regulation and compliance from day one. An interesting French AI startup in this field is Giskard<\/a>, which is developing an open-source testing framework, or \u201cthe best LLM antivirus in the market,\u201d as Giskard co-founder and CEO Alex Combessie told me. I\u2019ll have more to write about Giskard in the coming days.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, The Information reported<\/a> that Adaptive, an AI startup based in Amsterdam and co-founded by French AI researcher Julien Launay<\/a> was about to raise a seed around at a $100 million valuation. Adaptive helps companies iterate on their AI applications without relying on external data or annotations.<\/p>\n A source confirmed that Index Ventures is leading the Adaptive round with Iconiq and Motier Ventures participating. <\/p>\n Another source told me that Wiem Gharbi<\/a> is also raising a seed round with Index Ventures for an AI startup with a team split between Paris and London.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Motier Ventures<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In other news, I\u2019ve heard that Steeve Morin<\/a>, a key member of the team behind Zenly<\/a>, a popular consumer app that was acquired by Snap, is also creating an AI startup called ZML. The team will focus on improving machine learning inference and other low-level tools.<\/p>\n Maxime Germain<\/a>, the founder of mental health startup Jour, which was acquired by Alan<\/a>, is leaving Alan to start Heart Hands<\/a>, an AI startup that is developing a \u201csecond brain in your pocket,\u201d as an investor described it to me.<\/p>\n Pierre Valade<\/a>, the founder of Sunrise<\/a> and Jumbo<\/a>, is putting together a team for an AI startup currently called Chief of Staff. Hugo Mercier<\/a> is working on an AI startup in stealth mode as well.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s safe to call this new wave of startups a trend. While the overall tech ecosystem is still experiencing a downturn<\/a>, there\u2019s an absurd amount of activity among French startups at the early stage with new AI startups getting founded at a rapid pace and VC firms fighting for the most competitive funding rounds.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nAnd another wave of stealth AI startups<\/h2>\n