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.

The real problem with French startups 🥉

Last week’s newsletter started off with a question—where can European startups win? Speedinvest’s Andreas Schwarzenbrunner provided several answers to this critical question in a recent LinkedIn post, which is worth a read. Among the areas Schwarzenbrunner identified are: quantum computing, robotics, energy and climate tech, biotech, and healthtech. For these areas, he also tags several European companies excelling in each space.

Relatedly, last week saw a heated debate kickoff on Twitter and LinkedIn over French hustle culture (or lack there of) and I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name, Thibaut Mélen, at the heart of the story. Thibaut and I worked together at Revyze and I used to joke that he lived at Station F since he was such a ubiquitous presence at the campus.

Do French founders prendre leur après-midi too early? In some cases, probably. But I’ve also seen plenty of founders and early employees, like those at Revyze, outwork many of my former American colleagues. The French ecosystem is diverse and I’ve also heard many people talk about how the culture has shifted to increasingly prioritize chasing larger goals and putting in equally larger efforts to match.

If you’re looking for a critique of French startup culture let me offer you an alternative: It’s not that French founders lack hustle, but rather that some of them are building castles when they should be building bridges.

Look long enough (it won’t take that long) and you’ll find a certain brand of French startup that does more harm than good. They’re usually easy to spot and have one or more of the following characteristics:

• 🚫 Founded by grand école alumni who met in the same prepa classes.

• 🙅‍♂️ Website only available in French.

• 👎 Specify grand école or masters degree in their job postings, even for junior roles.

• 🥉 Well connected with French investors but never raised from international funds.

These companies are living out their own special version of the bronze medal meme— claiming victory from a false summit.

There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your country, but these founders take it so far that they are blind to reality. It reminds me of a joke I once heard. An American returns home from France and tells their friends “I love France because I feel so at home there. We have so much in common that they also think they’re better than everyone else.”

American companies can get away with more of this hubris thanks to the higher quantity of funding available, the large size of their local market, and the even larger size of the English speaking market globally. And yes, there are 310 million French speakers globally, which is close to the population of the US, but there are 4X more global English speakers.

A “France-over-everything” approach to company creation does not work in the long run for startups. If your market is interesting enough you’re going to have global competition who will out grow and out compete you. Even giants like NVIDIA and Apple (the two most valuable public companies in the world) see 46% and and 67% of their revenue respectively come from international markets.

The over-focus on France limits these bronze medal companies’ potential, and even worse it wastes the time and effort of the people working there. But the biggest issue I have is that these companies build false walls that make younger entrepreneurs feel unworthy. 

Success in entrepreneurship is not limited to those with 15 years of specialized education at the right elite schools with the right childhood friends. The companies that propagate this myth are the real problem with French startups, whether they work from 9-6 five days a week or 9-9 seven days a week.

With that, let’s jump into this week’s update.

📝 Quiz: On average, how much higher were pre-money Series A valuations in 2024 for AI companies vs. for non-AI companies?

(answer at the bottom of the newsletter)

• A.) 13%

• B.) 22%

• C.) 30%

• D.) 41%

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

• 👷 The UAE will invest €30-50 billion to build a giant AI data center in France: The planned construction will be at the heart of a new AI campus in France and was announced at the start of a week of AI-centered events in the capital.

• 💶 Paris-based VC Emblem closes €80 million fund: The fund, founded by Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan and Guillaume Durao, has already made 16 investments—including early checks for Pivot and Volta. They plan to invest in seed-stage startups across France and the Nordics with investments between €500,000 and €3 million for each deal.

• 🤖 Artificial Intelligence Action Summit kicks off in Paris: Guests will include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and US Vice President JD Vance amongst a swath of other business and state leaders who are gathering in Paris to discuss the future of AI development and safety.

• 📊 France finally has a 2025 budget: After months of uncertainty, the final budget reduced the Innovation Tax Credit (CII), reduced France 2030 investments by €2 billion, and has left JEI (young innovative company benefits) status in limbo for now.

• 📉 LightOn, France’s first ‘GenAI IPO’, disappoints in its first earnings report as a public company: Shares fell 7.4% after missing their growth target by 33%. This story gets weirder though when you look at the numbers, rather than the percentages. LightOn went public with only €1.2 million in ARR and only 10 corporate clients, far below the maturity level usually seen for a public company. The French Tech Journal’s Chris O’Brien sums it up best here, in light of these results, LightOn’s IPO looks increasingly like a PR stunt.

🌍 Headlines from around the world

• 🍒 Cherry Ventures raises €500M to invest in “the first trillion-dollar company in Europe” (TechCrunch)

• 🇬🇧 Coinbase Gains Approval to Offer Digital Asset Services in the UK (Decrypt)

• 📈 Megarounds back with a bang in January with highest monthly deal count since 2022 (Sifted)

• 💰 Hamilton Lane raises $600M for its first venture fund (PitchBook)

• 🥩 World’s first cell-cultivated meat dog treat goes on sale in store in the UK (Tech.eu)

• 👚 Shein is considering cutting its IPO price by 25% in response to U.S. tariffs (PYMNTS)

• ♊️ Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini is reportedly eyeing an IPO (Yahoo Finance)

• ✂️ Staffing cuts at Workday and Sonos 

• 🔎 Google abandons DEI hiring goals (TechCrunch)

New Funding 💶

14 companies raised €109.9 million in the last week.

Upcoming Events 🗓

• Unaite x Perplexity – February 11

• HEC Venture Lab presents: Fireside Chat with Boris Golden, General Partner at Partech – February 11

• IA et Énergie : quand vos données passent au vert ! – February 12

• SuperRare in Paris – February 12

• Women TechMakers: Building with AI – February 12

• Early Builders, From early employees to C-levels: Story of Partoo – February 13

• Women Scientists on the forefront of Climate Action – February 13

• Techstars Climate Coffee in Paris – February 13

• AI Agent Day at NFT Paris – February 15

• AI Tinkerers & Anthropic AI Agents Hackathon – February 16

• Community Apero at Climate House – February 26

Interesting Jobs 👩‍💻

• 🫡 Head of Talent Acquisition @ Back Market

• 📈 B2B Product Marketer @ Photoroom

• ✍️ Brand and Content Lead @ Tomorro

• 👷 Senior Product Manager @ Brevo

• ✋ Right Hand to the CEO (Internship) @ Guideflow

• 📝 Technical Writer (Freelance) @ Mistral

• 🔎 VC Analyst (Internship) @ daphni

• 🫡 Marketing Lead Belgium & Netherlands @ Qonto (referral link)

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Inside the French founders factory churning out AI startups like Mistral and Hugging Face (Sifted)

• Everything that happened with AI Agents this week (Adam Silverman)

• How much have French Y Combinator startups raised? (Erwan Gardelle)

• The Digital Diplomats: Is France Still an Innovation Nation in 2025? (French Tech Journal)

• The dumbest trade war (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Who hires the most former YC founders? (Lobster Capital)

• French pensioners could have been 3X wealthier than they are today (Martin Mignot)

• No-revenue decacorns + SoftBank + valuations doubling in 6 months: WE ARE SO BACK BABY 🚀 (Matt Turck)

Newsletter Recommendations 🫶

Quiz Answer: C.) 30%

According to data shared by Carta’s Peter Walker, pre-money valuations for AI companies were higher across the board in 2024 (and 2022 and 2023). 30% higher for Series A rounds, 42% higher for Seed rounds, and 50% higher for Series B rounds 🤯.