Final night time, Motier Ventures held a tech meetup centered on AI startups that includes among the most hyped tech startups within the French tech ecosystem: Mud, Finegrain, Gladia, Mistral AI and State of affairs — all of them are portfolio corporations of Motier Ventures. And you would really feel a way of pleasure each onstage and within the viewers.
Synthetic intelligence, similar to within the U.S., has rapidly turn into a buzzy vertical inside the French tech trade. However this time, France appears significantly effectively positioned to turn into one of many fundamental AI hubs of the world.
And it shouldn’t come as a shock. Tech giants have traditionally arrange AI analysis labs in Paris, as there’s a big expertise pool of PhD college students in math, laptop science and engineering. They often graduate from Polytechnique, ENS or Inria. They generally transfer to the U.S. for postdoctoral analysis after which transfer again to France to affix a analysis lab.
As an example, Fb (now Meta) created its Paris analysis lab again in 2015 with Yann LeCun on the helm of the AI initiative — this analysis group is known as FAIR, for Fb Synthetic Intelligence Analysis. Google adopted go well with with its personal AI analysis heart devoted to AI in Paris.
“The FAIR group is extraordinarily spectacular. Simply have a look at what they’ve performed with Llama,” an entrepreneur informed me yesterday. He not too long ago had a non-public assembly with among the engineers and scientists engaged on AI tasks.
And in the event you have a look at the founders of Mistral AI, the French AI startup engaged on open supply giant language fashions that raised a €105 million seed spherical ($112 million at at this time’s alternate price), all three co-founders (Arthur Mensch, Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample) beforehand labored at Google’s DeepMind or FAIR.
Final night time, Mistral’s co-founders put collectively a demo of Mistral AI in a ChatGPT-like interface referred to as Mistral AI Chat. The demo was primarily based on a brand new mannequin referred to as “mistral-70b-instruct-alpha01,” indicating that the group is actively engaged on a brand new mannequin with extra parameters in order that it may be extra aggressive with subtle LLMs. In response to a latest report from The Information, Mistral AI plans to boost as a lot as $300 million within the coming weeks.
Mistral isn’t the one high-profile AI firm in France. Poolside, an organization that not too long ago raised a $126 million seed round, plans to make use of AI to make it drastically simpler to jot down code. Co-founded by Jason Warner, the previous CTO of GitHub, and Eiso Kant, a serial entrepreneur who labored on Athenian and supply{d}, the corporate has picked Paris as its dwelling base.
Dust, an organization that’s engaged on integrating giant language fashions with inside company information from GitHub, Notion or Slack, additionally took the stage for a demo final night time. At Mud’s workplace warming social gathering, I spotted that Mud shares its lovely workplace constructing with Nabla, one other French AI startup centered on serving to docs leverage giant language fashions and co-founded by former FAIR engineers. This proves as soon as once more that an AI ecosystem is rising.
The founders of Mistral AI and Mud needed to go away the meetup rapidly after their demos as they had been each invited for dinner on the Elysée Palace, the residence of Emmanuel Macron. So there’s additionally some public assist for AI startups in France. An entrepreneur not too long ago informed me that a number of AI startups are working collectively on public tenders for presidency grants price thousands and thousands of euros as a part of France 2030.
One factor which may differentiate European AI startups from AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic is that they’re enthusiastic about regulation and compliance from day one. An fascinating French AI startup on this area is Giskard, which is creating an open supply testing framework, or “one of the best LLM antivirus out there,” as Giskard co-founder and CEO Alex Combessie informed me. I’ll have extra to jot down about Giskard within the coming days.
And one other wave of stealth AI startups
Earlier this week, The Data reported that Adaptive, an AI startup primarily based in Amsterdam and co-founded by French AI researcher Julien Launay, was about to boost a seed round at a $100 million valuation. Adaptive helps corporations iterate on their AI functions with out counting on exterior information or annotations.
A supply confirmed that Index Ventures is main the Adaptive spherical, with Iconiq and Motier Ventures taking part.
One other supply informed me that Wiem Gharbi can also be elevating a seed spherical with Index Ventures for an AI startup with a group break up between Paris and London.
Picture Credit: Motier Ventures
In different information, I’ve heard that Steeve Morin, a key member of the group behind Zenly, a preferred client app that was acquired by Snap, can also be creating an AI startup referred to as ZML. The group will give attention to bettering machine studying inference and different low-level instruments.
Maxime Germain, the founding father of psychological well being startup Jour, which was acquired by Alan, is leaving Alan to start out Heart Hands, an AI startup that’s creating a “second mind in your pocket,” as an investor described it to me.
Pierre Valade, the founding father of Dawn and Jumbo, is placing collectively a group for an AI startup presently referred to as Chief of Workers. Hugo Mercier is engaged on an AI startup in stealth mode as effectively.
I believe it’s protected to name this new wave of startups a development. Whereas the general tech ecosystem continues to be experiencing a downturn, there’s an absurd quantity of exercise amongst French startups on the early stage with new AI startups getting based at a speedy tempo and VC companies combating for probably the most aggressive funding rounds.