((Automated translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer https://bit.ly/rtrsauto)) by Martin Coulter
France will this week host tech executives and political figures, including former US Secretary of State John Kerry, EU industrial director Thierry Breton and former Google boss Eric Schmidt, to assert the role of Paris as a hub for artificial intelligence.
The Viva Technology conference will put French innovators at the forefront, as participants address key questions about artificial intelligence (AI), including its potential impact on upcoming elections and climate change.
LVMH LVMH.PA , the world’s largest luxury group, based in Paris, also lent its support to VivaTech as a founding partner of the event.
Its chairman and CEO, Bernard Arnault, one of the world’s richest personalities, is expected to draw crowds when he visits the group’s sprawling booth, which showcases new technologies from prestigious brands such as 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 other similar tools, by striving to attract new startups.
President Emmanuel Macron has attracted investment from major U.S. tech companies like Amazon AMZN.O and Microsoft MSFT.O , while trying to revive EU plans to better integrate capital markets across the continent. He hopes this will help raise the capital needed to support emerging companies in the field of artificial intelligence.
Organizers say Paris’s status as the luxury capital of the world can help it attract investment in technology.
“Luxury is always linked to innovation, because the goal is always to offer something that no one else can,” said François Bitouzet, CEO of VivaTech, who cited the release of the Grande -EU Brittany as a growth factor for France.
Paris ranked second behind London in terms of technology investment, but there are signs of change, Bitouzet added.
“The Parisian ecosystem is very dynamic and there have been numerous investments in recent years,” he said.
Investors have pumped nearly $8 billion into French tech companies in 2023, behind Britain ($13 billion) but ahead of Germany ($7 billion), according to a recent report from the capital firm -Atomico risk.
If Paris is not able to compete for first place with London, technological startups are multiplying in France at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe, with nearly 3,000 creations in 2023, according to Atomico.
A similar number has set up in Britain over the same period, but the number of new businesses created each year there has been falling since 2020.
THE MOST DYNAMIC COMPANIES
In the 18 months since ChatGPT launched the generative AI craze, some of the most lucrative fundraising rounds have come from Paris-based companies.
Some of Paris’ fastest-growing companies were founded by former researchers from industry bigwigs such as Google DeepMind GOOGL.O , like Mistral AI and Holistic AI.
Last September, Julien Launay left his job at Hugging Face, a leading French-American AI company, to launch his own company, Adaptive ML, which helps other companies create their own generative AI tools , and which has staff in Paris and New York.
The company raised $20 million less than six months later, in a funding round led by California-based ICONIQ Capital and Index Ventures, which has headquarters in London and San Francisco.
“ICONIQ and Index were the two main investors, but if you look at the smaller ones, we tried to get a lot of French backers on board because we thought it was a good thing,” Mr Launay said . “France has a lot of talent and startups, but in terms of funds, there are still much less than in the United States
European startups have always struggled to raise the significant capital they need from local investors. While the European Union offers a large single market for goods and services, the capital markets of the 27 member states are accompanied by a maze of different securities laws, taxes and accounting rules, which results in higher compliance costs and less liquid markets.
“The most important thing is that these companies get financing, said Hannah Seal, partner at Index. “What’s important is that these companies feel they can continue to find and recruit the talent needed to build giants in Europe, and we see that this is more and more the case