France is aiming to become a global AI superpower — but not without help from U.S. Big Tech
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a meeting with members of the AI sector at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, France, on May 21, 2024.
Yoan Valat | Afp | Getty Images
PARIS — France is touting itself as the next artificial intelligence superpower.
The Viva Technology conference in Paris last week was buzzing with talk about how far France has come as a leader in AI.
A great deal of chatter surrounded the French AI firm H, previously named Holistic, which raised $220 million in a seed funding round from investors including U.S. tech giant Amazon and Google’s billionaire ex-CEO Eric Schmidt.
A common theme for French AI firms receiving large sums of money is that they’re adding U.S. tech heavyweights to their shareholder lists.
Earlier this month, France received a flood of new private investments, led by a commitment from Microsoft of 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion), its largest ever into France.
AI everywhere at Viva Tech
At Viva Tech, AI was everywhere. Past the large, bright pink “VIVA” sign toward the front, there was an entire alley called “AI Avenue,” which was surrounded by U.S. tech firms such as Salesforce and AWS.
Generative AI was on display everywhere — even from companies you wouldn’t expect.
For example, French beauty giant L’Oreal showed off an AI-powered beauty assistant called “BeautyGenius” at a large booth near the center of the Porte de Versailles conference venue.
The success of Viva Tech has become symbolically important for France as part of its bid to become a leading tech and AI hub that can rival the likes of the U.S. and China.
“France is the leader on artificial intelligence in Europe,” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Viva Tech last week.
He made clear that, while France has a helping hand from U.S. tech giants, “we want to have our own artificial intelligence being created and being developed in France.”
Referring to Microsoft’s investment in France, Le Maire said, “Microsoft is much welcome in our country. But the challenge for us is to have our own devices, our own scientists … and we are working very hard for that.”
France boasts a strong AI research and development ecosystem, home to key facilities like the Facebook AI Research center from Meta and Google’s AI research hub in Paris, as well as leading universities.
“France stands as one of Europe’s most vibrant innovation hubs,” Etienne Grass, the France managing director of Capgemini Invent, the digital innovation arm of Capgemini, told CNBC. “The nation nurtures a thriving startup scene, marked by significant strides in AI,” Grass added.
Imran Ghory, partner at Blossom Capital, said that while France has a great track record when it comes to research and academia, it has struggled to funnel quality talent into “great companies.”
AI labs from Meta and Google have “created a training ground for students and researchers to learn what leading tech companies look and work like from the inside,” Ghory said.
“We’re now seeing the fruits of this as many researchers and AI engineers begin spinning out their own companies.”
Vying for tech leadership
French President Emmanuel Macron told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview last week that his country is “leading the tech industry in Europe.” However, he noted Europe is “lagging behind” the U.S. and that the continent needs more “big players.”
“It’s insane to have a world where the big giants just come from China and the U.S,” Macron told said at the Elysee Palace. He praised Mistral, the French AI firm backed by U.S. tech giant Microsoft, and H.
Last week, Macron met with Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist of Meta, and James Manyika, Google’s senior vice president of tech and society, among others, at the Elysee to discuss ways to make Paris a global AI hub.
Maurice Levy, CEO of advertising and public relations giant Publicis Groupe, told CNBC’s Karen Tso he thinks France has the potential to become a top five country for AI development. Levy said France is “determined” to narrow the gap between the U.S. and China and Europe when it comes to AI.
France “can be part of the five biggest countries on AI in the world,” after the U.S., China, Israel, and the U.K., Levy said in a TV interview last week. He referred to H’s mammoth funding round as an example of the momentum surrounding French AI right now.
Levy said roughly 40% of the tech demos at Viva Tech were AI. AI is “something which is … not only taking off, but has already taken off quite massively,” he said.
In a fireside discussion last week, Google’s Manyika said a lot of the innovation the firm has been bringing to the table is sourced from engineers in France.
He said that Google’s recently introduced Gemma AI, a lightweight, open-source model, was developed heavily at the U.S. internet giant’s Paris AI hub.
According to data from Dealroom, France claimed a roughly 20% share of overall European AI startup funding in 2023, higher than the 15% average of European funding that goes into AI startups across the bloc.
France isn’t the European AI leader, though, according to Dealroom, with U.K. firms raising more than double the amount of both AI and GenAI investment than France.
Innovation versus regulation
France’s Macron said the challenge for Europe is accelerating AI research and development while also regulating at “appropriate scale.”
Last week, the EU approved the AI Act, a landmark law regulating artificial intelligence.
Some tech executives warned Europe could hamper its AI ambitions with regulation that is too restrictive. France has been among the countries to have criticized the EU AI Act for being too restrictive when it comes to innovation.
Pascal Brier, Capgemini’s chief innovation officer, said while regulation is needed to ensure AI isn’t left to become too powerful, it’s important to ensure new laws like the AI Act don’t accidentally “kill” innovation.
He said regulators should avoid implementing the “principle of precaution” — the idea that AI makers should avoid doing things that can do harm, as a rule.
“There’s no way you can stop AI — it’s only the end of the beginning,” Brier told CNBC. “It’s not going to stop there.”
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is initiating a secondary share sale that would give the company a valuation of up to $800 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
SpaceX is also telling some investors it will consider going public possibly around the end of next year, the report said.
At the elevated price, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor would be valued above ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which wrapped up a share sale at a $500 billion valuation in October.
SpaceX has been investing heavily in reusable rockets, launch facilities and satellites, while competing for government contracts with newer space players, including Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin. SpaceX is far ahead, and operates the world’s largest network of satellites in low earth orbit through Starlink, which powers satellite internet services under the same brand name.
A SpaceX IPO would include its Starlink business, which the company previously considered spinning out.
Musk recently discussed whether SpaceX would go public during Tesla‘s annual shareholders meeting last month. Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, said he doesn’t love running publicly traded businesses, in part because they draw “spurious lawsuits,” and can “make it very difficult to operate effectively.”
However, Musk said during the meeting that he wanted to “try to figure out some way for Tesla shareholders to participate in SpaceX,” adding, “maybe at some point, SpaceX should become a public company despite all the downsides.”
WATCH: What retail investors should know about OpenAI and SpaceX
The logo for Google LLC is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 17, 2021.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
A U.S. judge on Friday finalized his decision for the consequences Google will face for its search monopoly ruling, adding new details to the decided remedies.
Last year, Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search, and in September, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the Department of Justice.
That included the proposal of a forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser, which provides data that helps the company’s advertising business deliver targeted ads. Alphabet shares popped 8% in extended trading as investors celebrated what they viewed as minimal consequences from a historic defeat last year in the landmark antitrust case.
Investors largely shrugged off the ruling as non-impactful to Google. However some told CNBC it’s still a bite that could “sting.”
Mehta on Friday issued additional details for his ruling in new filings.
“The age-old saying ‘the devil is in the details’ may not have been devised with the drafting of an antitrust remedies judgment in mind, but it sure does fit,” Mehta wrote in one of the Friday filings.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously said it will appeal the remedies.
In August 2024, Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act and held a monopoly in search and related advertising. The antitrust trial started in September 2023.
In his September decision, Mehta said the company would be able to make payments to preload products, but it could not have exclusive contracts that condition payments or licensing. Google was also ordered to loosen its hold on search data. Mehta in September also ruled that Google would have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data, though “not ads data.”
The DOJ had asked Google to stop the practice of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
The judge’s September ruling didn’t end the practice entirely — Mehta ruled out that Google couldn’t enter into exclusive deals, which was a win for the company. Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.
Mehta’s new details
In the Friday filings, Mehta wrote that Google cannot enter into any deal like the one it’s had with Apple “unless the agreement terminates no more than one year after the date it is entered.”
This includes deals involving generative artificial intelligence products, including any “application, software, service, feature, tool, functionality, or product” that involve or use genAI or large-language models, Mehta wrote.
GenAI “plays a significant role in these remedies,” Mehta wrote.
The judge also reiterated the web index data it will require Google to share with certain competitors.
Google has to share some of the raw search interaction data it uses to train its ranking and AI systems, but it does not have to share the actual algorithms — just the data that feeds them.” In September, Mehta said those data sets represent a “small fraction” of Google’s overall traffic, but argued the company’s models are trained on data that contributed to Google’s edge over competitors.
The company must make this data available to qualified competitors at least twice, one of the Friday filing states. Google must share that data in a “syndication license” model whose term will be five years from the date the license is signed, the filing states.
Mehta on Friday also included requirements on the makeup of a technical committee that will determine the firms Google must share its data with.
Committee “members shall be experts in some combination of software engineering, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, economics, behavioral science, and data privacy and data security,” the filing states.
The judge went on to say that no committee member can have a conflict of interest, such as having worked for Google or any of its competitors in the six months prior to or one year after serving in the role.
Google is also required to appoint an internal compliance officer that will be responsible “for administering Google’s antitrust compliance program and helping to ensure compliance with this Final Judgment,” per one of the filings. The company must also appoint a senior business executive “whom Google shall make available to update the Court on Google’s compliance at regular status conferences or as otherwise ordered.”
This is breaking news. Check back for updates.
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