Welcome to French Tech Updates! Your weekly source of startup, VC, and tech news and insights. I’m James, a startup-obsessed American living in Paris.

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

🤒 Fidji Simo steps back from OpenAI as leadership gaps multiply

Fidji Simo, the French executive who joined OpenAI as General Manager of Applications last year, announced this week that she is taking several weeks of leave to address a relapse of her autoimmune condition. OpenAI Co-Founder and current President Greg Brockman has assumed product strategy responsibilities in her absence.

Simo’s absence comes just days after OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch announced she was stepping down to receive treatment for late stage breast cancer. The absences are landing at an operationally fraught moment with OpenAI facing an antitrust suit from Elon Musk, heightening competition from Anthropic, and moving towards a planned IPO.

📍 Revolut to plant its Western Europe HQ in Paris's Silicon Sentier

Almost one year after announcing their expansion in Paris Revolut has signed a 10-year lease on a 2,400 m² Haussmannian building on rue de Réaumur in the heart of the Silicon Sentier. The new Western Europe headquarters is due to open in early 2027 and will eventually welcome 500 local employees with former Société Générale CEO Frédéric Oudéa as Regional President. The Paris hub will function as the command centre for Revolut's Western European operations across France (7M+ customers), Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Portugal.

With a combined 25 million customers Revolut now calls Western Europe its most important region—which is interesting considering the company also just applied for an American banking charter. Revolut has committed to filing for a French banking license to expand their services in Europe and plans to invest over €1 billion in France over three years.

🛠️ France's sovereign cloud ambition runs into a hardware problem

Following the Senate's recent adoption of a bill to regulate data centre placement in France Jiliti President Stéphane Hascoët is making an uncomfortable argument: a truly sovereign cloud doesn't yet exist because Europe has no domestic hardware manufacturing industry to back it up. The software exists through French vendors like Vates and with European networking from Alcatel, Nokia, Ericsson, and others but the servers, chips, and physical infrastructure layer still runs on American and Asian components.

This means every "sovereign" European cloud is still sitting on a foundation it doesn't control. For French AI founders banking on sovereign infrastructure as a competitive moat this is a key structural gap that the data centre debate hasn't yet seriously addressed. Elsewhere this week in digital sovereignty, the French government announced they will move from some computers from Microsoft to open source operating system Linux to reduce reliance on American suppliers.

🪖 France proposes an additional €36 billion for defense 

The French government presented an update to its Military Programming Law (LPM) in the Council of Ministers on April 8 that will inject an additional €36 billion into defense spending through 2030. The revision was explicitly driven by the deteriorating security environment surrounding the war in Ukraine, growing doubts about US commitment to NATO under Trump, and the need to replenish depleted munitions stocks.

€8.5 billion or 23% of of the additional budget is earmarked specifically for artillery shells, air defense missiles, and long-range missiles. For the French defense tech ecosystem, which saw €180M in new equity funding during Q1 this year, the proposed budget increase is a sustained demand signal from their end buyer—running counter to a new government report citing a €3 billion defense tech spending gap.

🥈 France claims #2 spot in European Deep Tech

According to the 2026 Dealroom European Deep Tech Report released last week, France now ranks as Europe's second-largest deep tech ecosystem by funding raised. The new report puts France behind the UK but ahead of Germany with French deep tech investment growing 48% last year vs. the UK's 12%.

🤑 French taxes are falling but companies still pay more than almost anywhere in Europe

France's production taxes fell from €106 billion in 2023 to €104 billion in 2024 but remain the second highest in Europe. While many asset-light startups are exempted, these taxes still hit later stage companies and startups with an industrial or infrastructure-heavy footprint.

As of today, France sits second only to Sweden in production tax burden as a share of GDP and in absolute terms collects more than Italy or Germany. This gap between France's stated ambition to be the best place in Europe to build a company and the actual cost structure remains a topic of hot debate in the tech ecosystem.

🙋‍♂️ Quiz: What are the 3 largest fundraising rounds in France so far this year?

(answer at the bottom of the newsletter)

• A.) AMI Labs, Pasqal, Pennylane

• B.) Harmattan AI, Pasqal, newcelo

• C.) AMI Labs, newcleo, Alan

• D.) Naboo, Hynaero, Pennylane

🌍 Headlines around the world

• 💰 Global VC hit a record $300 billion in Q1 2026 with AI accounting for 80% of all funding (Crunchbase)

• 🤖 Anthropic's new "Claude Mythos" model discovered thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major OS and is being withheld from public release. (TechCrunch)

• 🔍 A new study by AI startup Oumi found that Google AI Overviews is wrong approximately 10% of the time (NYT)

• 🪄 Meta launched "Muse Spark," its first closed model from Meta Superintelligence Labs in a departure from its previous open-source AI stance (TechCrunch)

• 🇨🇳 DeepSeek is reportedly building its next model to run entirely on Huawei chips (Reuters)

• 📜 OpenAI released a policy blueprint calling for robot taxes, public wealth funds redistributing AI gains, and government incentives for companies to adopt four-day workweeks (TechCrunch)

• 🏦 Bill Ackman's Pershing Square offered $64.4 billion to acquire Universal Music Group and relist it from Amsterdam to the NYSE (Bloomberg)

• 🏗️ Maine advanced a bill to ban new data centers over 20 megawatts, potentially becoming the first US state to enact such a ban (Maine Morning Star)

• 🧬 Anthropic acquired eight-month-old biotech AI startup Coefficient Bio for $400 million (TechCrunch)

• 🌕 NASA's Artemis II crew completed a historic lunar flyby on April 6, setting a new record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth at 252,760 miles (NASA)

• 🪖 Hermeus raised $350 million to build unmanned hypersonic fighters (TechCrunch)

New Funding 💶

8 companies announced €70.6M in new funding last week.

Upcoming Events 🗓

• 🆕 The Pitch by Deel [Livestream] - April 13

• Agents Anonymous + OpenClaw Meet-up – April 14

• Crypto Legislative Hackathon – April 14

• 🆕 Builder Night: Build your own ChatGPT & MCP App – April 14

• Fintech à Paris with Worldpay & BVNK – April 15

• Blurred Lines: The Evolution of Product & Design with AI – April 15

• AI Marketing Night #6 – April 16

• 🆕 Matinale Hub France IA - Livre blanc "IA, Démocratie & Souveraineté" – April 17

• 🆕 Ukrainian Defence Innovation: Evolution, Trends & Next Steps – April 20

• 🆕 Building your MVP in the age of AI – April 21

• AI Circle Paris: Kill the PR? How AI is Rewriting the SDLC – April 22

• 🆕 Build Your First AI Agent | Dust x Paatch – April 22

• FIA x Microsoft x Avalon (5ᵉ Afterwork FIA) – April 23

• 🆕 Claude Code for Everyone | Building The Agentic Company of the Future – April 23

• Paris Fintech Hackathon: Solve with AI – April 25

• 🆕 James Vincent: The power of storytelling for founders – April 28

• 🆕 European Defense Tech Meetup, Paris – May 19

• 🆕 Contech Connect @ Station F – May 28

• VivaTech 2026 – June 17-20

• 🆕 INSEAD AI Forum, Paris – June 22-23

• 🆕 INSEAD LaunchPad Demo Day – June 30

Interesting Jobs 👩‍💻

• ✍️ Global Copywriter Partner @ Malt

• 📈 Lead Growth @ Alma

• 📣 Head of Marketing (B2B/B2G) @ Vizzia

• 💼 Senior Account Executive – Venture Capital @ Roundtable

• 🎓️ Product Operations Intern @ Qonto

• ⚙️ Head of Strategy & Operations – Partner Success @ Pennylane

• 🔐 Strategy Manager – Consumer (Ledger Wallet) @ Ledger

• 🧑‍💼 Chief of Staff (6-month maternity cover) @ Formance

• 🛡️ Head of Business Operations @ Orus

• ❤️ Customer Loyalty & Community Builder @ Qonto

• 📧 Enterprise Enablement Manager @ Brevo

• 💊 Head of Growth & Acquisition @ Lucis

• 📧 Growth Marketing Intern @ Brevo

• 🎤 Project Delivery Manager @ GetVocal AI

• 🤝 Head of Sales & Partnership @ Lucis

• 🏥 Founding Marketing Lead @ Vocca

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Meet the woman who alerts the world when an asteroid could hit (The Guardian)

• To create a new category, name the game (Andy Raskin)

• 137-Year-Old Piece of Eiffel Tower to Be Auctioned in Paris (NYT)

• Power, Proximity, and the $300M Lesson: Why OpenAI Bought a 17-Month-Old Show (Rolodex Media)

Newsletter Recommendations 🫶

Quiz Answer: A.) AMI Labs, Pasqal, Pennylane