Paris vies for Europe’s AI crown as key conference beckons
FRANCE will host tech executives and political figures, among them former US secretary of state John Kerry, EU industrial chief Thierry Breton and ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt, this week as it looks to assert Paris's role as an artificial intelligence (AI) hub.
The “Viva Technology” conference will put French innovators front-andcentre as attendees tackle key questions around AI, including its potential impact on upcoming elections and climate change.
Paris-based LVMH, the world's largest luxury group, has also thrown its weight behind VivaTech as a founding partner of the event.
Its chairperson and CEO Bernard Arnault, one of the world's wealthiest individuals, is expected to draw crowds during his visit to the group's sprawling stand, featuring new tech from prestigious brands like Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer and Dior.
Over the past 18 months, France has attempted to build a reputation as a leader in generative AI, the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT and similar tools, striving to attract new start-up launches.
President Emmanuel Macron has drawn investments from American big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft, while trying to revive EU plans to better integrate capital markets across the continent.
He hopes that would help raise the capital needed to nurture emerging AI companies.
Paris's status as the global capital of luxury could help it attract investment in technology as well, organisers say.
“Luxury is always linked with innovation, because your aim is always to provide something no one else can provide,” said Francois Bitouzet, the managing director of VivaTech, who cited Britain's exit from the EU as a factor in France's growth.
Paris had ranked second-place to London in terms of tech investment, but there were signs of change, Bitouzet added.
“The ecosystem in Paris is very dynamic, and there has been a lot of investment here in the past few years,” he said.
Investors pumped close to $8 billion (R150bn) into French tech companies in 2023, behind Britain ($13bn) but ahead of third-place Germany ($7bn), according to a recent report from venture capital firm Atomico.
While Paris might not immediately challenge London for the top spot, tech start-ups have been popping up in France at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe, with close to 3 000 founded in 2023, according to Atomico.
A similar number set up shop in Britain over the same period, but the number of new companies founded there each year has been in decline since 2020.
In the 18 months since ChatGPT sparked the generative AI craze, some of the most lucrative fund-raising rounds have been raised by Parisian companies. Some of Paris's buzziest companies were founded by former researchers at industry stalwarts like Google DeepMind, such as Mistral AI and Holistic AI. Last September, Julien Launay quit his job at Hugging Face, a leading French-American AI firm, to launch his own start-up, Adaptive ML, which helps other companies build their own generative AI tools.
The company raised $20 million less than six months later.