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 AI-enabled anyway? 🤖

Welcome to another edition of French Tech Updates!

This week opens with a slightly different intro than usual….a more “ranty” one. Maybe it’s because I just got back to rainy Paris after a sunny weekend in Provence. O, maybe the culture is rubbing off on me. Either way, please accompany me for a brief bout of complaining (any maybe some useful ideas).

I am what you could call a “marketing guy.” When I’m not writing this newsletter I work in product marketing. Prior to tech, spent my career at various advertising agencies. In the decade + that I’ve spent in this field I’ve spent a lot of that time writing, re-writing, debating, and nit-picking taglines.

I once watched a group of 15 people, including one of the world’s most well-known CMOs, argue over a single sentence for two weeks. Us marketing folks take our taglines seriously…

And AI has such a silly tagline: “AI-enabled.”

What does that even mean? Maybe you’ve created an AI first no-code app builder. Maybe your website has a chat bot. Maybe you’ve been using predictive AI in the background for over a decade. The phrase is essentially meaningless since it covers such a broad range of possibilities.

Yet, every tech company wants to show that they’re embracing AI. So, we’re left with AI-enabled. And, despite my disdain for the wording, AI-enabled (like AI) is on an absolute tear this year. Just look at this Google trends chart.

If you’ve made it this far in, you may be wondering why I care about this at all. Fair question.

Two reasons:

1.) WHO this phrase is for (spoiler, it’s not you)

2.) WHAT it means for the industry

Before I explain both of these points, here’s another Google trends chart for a different buzz-word. Try to guess what it is.

If you guessed “something related to the internet” pat yourself on the back, you’re close enough. That’s the chart for “Web 2.0”—another meaningless buzzword from the early 2000s.

Companies in the Web 2.0 wave include Google, Facebook, Twitter (or X or whatever), and Wikipedia. These businesses are all radically different from each other but were grouped under the same, very broad Web 2.0 bucket in the early 2000s. Yet, in 2025, absolutely no one would describe Google as a leading “Web 2.0” business.

So why do it at all?

Because these vague phrases aren’t for you. They’re for investors.

If you need to raise money for a promising but complex business in a relatively new industry then your investors need some guidance. How do they know you’re a cutting-edge tech leader? Well, your tools are “AI-enabled.”

99% of your customers don’t care that your product is using AI. They care that it solves their problem better than other options.

But investors do care. So we get “AI-enabled” everywhere creating a lot of noise and adding little value. Most of us can just ignore this phrase.

It’s ubiquity is also an indicator of how early we still are.

The reason no one uses “Web 2.0” anymore is because the world caught up to the tech. Many people now understand that Google runs a search business, Facebook runs social networks, Wikipedia is a giant online encyclopedia, and no one actually knows what the hell X is doing.

The world caught up to the technology, the descriptions became more nuanced, and we moved on.

But, while Web 2.0 died as a phrase, the companies it described became behemoths.

If you’re looking for an indicator of how AI is developing, watching for the inevitable decline of “AI-enabled” isn’t a bad tracker to watch.

I know for me it can’t come soon enough.

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

What’s new this week in 🇫🇷

• 🧠 Otium Capital debuts Oitum Studio: the new generalist startup studio will have €180M to invest through 2030 and aims to launch 10 new ventures each year. Their focus will be on fast-to-market, low-R&D projects across consumer sectors.

• 🔬 Omnes launches Real Tech fund two with €112M: the deeptech focused fund will invest in growth stage companies operating in industries like energy, space, and industrial innovation. The planned total size of the fund is €200 million to support ticket sizes between €5-€7 million.

• 🏬 Re-Sources Capital introduces a new entrepreneur-led fund: Paris-based private equity firm Re-Sources Capital has launched a new fund in Rennes aimed at helping regional SMEs grow or change hands. Backed by local business leaders and Compagnie Lebon, the fund will invest €800,000 to €6 million per deal as a minority shareholder and aims to provide hands-on support for companies that drive local economic development.

• 🇫🇷 Provence Angels and Var Business Angels merge: The new unified business angel network aims to be a stronger regional source of capital for French startups.

• 🇪🇺 Meta and Apple are not happy about the latest DMA ruling: Both companies have filed appeals to the decisions that could see them fined a combined €700 million. I recommend reading Meta’s press release in full because it is a masterclass in snarky yet professional writing.

• 🏦 B2B fintech Qonto has applied for a full banking license: The move marks a major transition for the company which has been operating under a payment institution license. A full banking license will enable Qonto to offer additional credit products to its customer base, which recently topped 600,000 freelancers and SMEs.

• 🦄 LumApps acquires Swiss startup Beekeeper: the Zurich-based business, which built a mobile-first platform for frontline workers, has been acquired in a merger that values the combined company at over $1 billion with 7 million users.

• 🐛 Ÿnsect raises €8.6 million but it may be a bridge round too far: the embattled insect farming startup is also laying off over half its staff and pausing most operations as it seeks a longer-term turnaround. A commercial court will review progress this September while Ÿnsect continues to search for €24.4 million in additional funding.

• ⏯️ Mistral joins the call to pause the EU AI Act: More than 45 European companies, including ASML, Airbus, and Mistral, are urging the EU to delay its new AI Act by two years. They argue the rules are unclear, risk harming European innovation, and come without the promised guidance. The group wants the EU to slow down and focus on regulatory quality before enforcement begins next month.

🌍 Headlines from around the world

• 🤑 Figma files for IPO in what could be the most valuable public listing so far in 2025 (Reuters)

• 🤝 Grammarly acquires 11-year-old email app Superhuman (Superhuman Blog)

• 🤖 xAI raises $10 billion in debt and equity (CNBC)

• 👩‍⚖️ US Senate removes controversial ‘AI moratorium’ from budget bill (TechCrunch)

• 🔬 Meta is reportedly offering 9-figure pay packages to attract AI talent (Wired)

• ❌ Microsoft fires 9,000 employees, 4% of its global workforce (AP)

• 🤩 2-year-old Swedish AI coding platform Lovable is raising $150M at a ≈$2B valuation (FT)

• 🇨🇳 The U.S. lifts export controls restricting computer chip sales and business in China (MarketWatch)

• 😳 Oracle and OpenAI sign a data center deal worth $30 billion per year (Data Center Dynamics)

New Funding 💶

14 companies announced €179 million in new funding last week.

Upcoming Events 🗓

• Paris Open Source Soirée hosted by Hugging Face – July 9

• Cursor Meetup Paris – July 10

• Manus Vibe Coding Night, Paris – July 10

• Hacking Paris – July 11-13

• RevenueCat's Vibe Coding Catfe, Paris – July 15

• Future of Manufacturing: Cheaper, Faster, Greener – July 16

Interesting Jobs 👩‍💻

• Senior Product Manager @ Brevo

• Bras Droit Head of Growth @ Fygr

• Chief of Staff @ Mirakl

• Business Analyst @ Quandela

• Growth Marketer (Internship) @ Aktio

• Head of Marketing @ Qevlar AI

• Senior Product Manager @ Qevlar AI

• Staff AI Product Manager @ Mirakl

What Else I’m Reading 📚

• Why I Disagree With Sequoia's Thesis on AI (Rob May)

• What Happens After AI Destroys College Writing? (The New Yorker)

• Figma – Benchmarking the S1 Data (Clouded Judgement)

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