France and Europe enter 2026 caught between AI ambition and geopolitical reality as they try to scale national champions, enforce rules on Big Tech, and confront the U.S. over power, platforms, and control.
31 December: It's time for a tech yearbook moment. In 2025, French tech saw big AI ambitions collide with funding reality, sovereignty and cybersecurity concerns, and a year that felt a little less euphoric, and a lot more grown-up.
As 2025 closes, BetterTech founder James Martin warns that the race to deploy AI is stripping away vital safeguards. Also: Yann LeCun finds a CEO, French retail investors are using more AI, and Hugging Face ships more robots.
UMA believes Europe—not Silicon Valley—is the best place to build the robots of tomorrow. LightOn's revenue prospects grow dim. France's defense and security are all about sovereignty when it comes to AI. Except when they are not. And an un-AI commercial goes viral for being, well, not AI.
Special aiPulse edition: Gradium emerges from stealth with a €60M seed to make real-time voice the global AI interface. Yann LeCun exits Meta to chase world models, warning that Silicon Valley’s ChatGPT obsession is blinding it to the next revolution, and Paris may lead it.
Mistral AI unloads Mistral 3. Gradium spins out of Kyutai to ride the Voice AI wave. UMA Robotics emerges out of stealth with a humanoid robotics "supergroup." HyprView Co-founder Victor Outters explains how the company is using photonics and AI to turn tumor light signatures into readable biology.
Adopt AI turned the Grand Palais into a deep-freeze cathedral of lusty futuristic dreamers with 25,000 builders, CEOs, and policymakers chasing the next wave of AI use cases. Beyond the buzzwords: Macron’s sovereignty push, mega-funding shivers, and Europe’s push to compete. Brrrrr! #SnowMiser
The Franco-German digital summit delivers a sovereignty-themed AI rom-com. Voice AI surges as GetVocal lands $26M for human-agentic voice agents. Volta raises €11M to drag B2B into the digital era.
Freeda's AI catches blueprint blunders; Yann LeCun ditches Meta; Beside rings up $32M for its AI voice app; Anthropic lands in Paris; Accel says Europe's AI application startups are rocking; there's a robot loose in a nuclear power plant.
The American Tech giant released a report emphasizing all the ways it's spending €4 billion on France's AI transformation. Plus: Nvidia eyes a $1B bet on Poolside, Schneider Electric rides the data center wave, and French publishers warn of AI abuse.
Scikit-learn’s creators aim to turn France’s AI research into global business with Probabl. Plus: Doctolib’s AI parenting assistant, Mistral’s new enterprise platform, France’s civil-service chatbot, OpenAI’s Paris expansion, and this week’s top AI funding rounds.
Phagos uses AI-designed bacteriophages to fight bacterial infections; Claimy is building algorithms to chase lost musical royalties. Plus: Mistral AI gets a fancy new crib; Paris ranks #3 in global AI hubs; Probabl leads AI funding with €13M round.
It's Cybermois, France's cybersecurity month. For Part II of our special Cybersecurity package, we look at MokN's platform that uses AI and "fake doors" to trick hackers into revealing stolen credentials. CEOs Stu Solomon (HUMAN) and Philippe Humeau (CrowdSec) discuss the AI future of security.
France gets a new AI and digital minister as Naïma Moutchou joins the Government du Jour. Kikleo uses computer vision and AI to fight food waste. Gojob secures €120 million to scale its AI temp platform globally. Plus: ETIs embrace AI, a real fake-news network exposed, and data centers under fire.
C4 Ventures launches a €100M fund as French AI startups raise €30M+ across 8 deals, from Juisci's medical research platform to Chat3D's generative models. Yet Gigi and Rippletide still decamp for Silicon Valley despite strong European momentum.
Cohere doubles Paris team, Deezer battles AI-music surge, MedGPT beats ChatGPT in exams, and €50M+ in fresh French AI funding fuels fintech, healthtech, and infra innovation.
