Paris named as Europe's leading tech ecosystem, beating London
By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Paris has been named as the new European tech champion, beating London for the first time on some metrics, according to data from Dealroom, which collects information on startups and venture capital firms.
Between 2017 and 2024, the combined enterprise value of Paris startups increased 5.3 times, compared with 4.2 times for London, Dealroom said, after assessing dozens of metrics that contribute to a successful tech ecosystem.
Although London attracted bigger funding rounds, the actual valuations of the companies have not increased dramatically, while the funding rounds secured by Paris-based companies have had a bigger impact on valuations, it said.
French tech companies, including Mistral AI and Poolside, raised $7.8 billion last year, less than London's $11.3 billion.
Europe has been falling behind other regions in tech innovations, with only some countries trying to boost tech investments.
While the market capitalisation of global tech, media and telecom companies rose from $7 trillion in 2000 to $34 trillion last year, Europe's share dropped from 30% to just 7%, a McKinsey report said on Wednesday.
If Europe had maintained its share, it would have generated an additional $8 trillion in market value, it said.
Paris is also the only European city on Dealroom's top five global champions list, which is dominated by U.S. cities.
It comes a month ahead of Paris hosting one of the largest global tech conferences, VivaTech, featuring top executives from companies such as Nvidia, Alibaba, Meta, OpenAI, Mistral, Anthropic and Cohere. Last year's conference was attended by more than 165,000 people.
"It's not just about the competitiveness of Paris on the AI scene today, it's also about what will happen next and how we can keep on attracting the talent, investment, and the tech activities," Francois Bitouzet, managing director of VivaTech, told Reuters.
Since coming to power in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has talked about wanting France to be a world leader in AI and 'deep-tech', inviting several firms to invest in the country and pushing for creation of startup incubator Station F.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
29 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Elon Musk says xAI will retrain Grok: 'Far too much garbage'
When you're Elon Musk, you don't have to rely on centuries of prevailing human understanding — you can create your own. "We will use Grok 3.5 (maybe we should call it 4), which has advanced reasoning, to rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors," Musk wrote on X on Friday night. Then, he said he would retrain Grok's latest model on that new base of knowledge to be free of proverbial waste. "Far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data," he added. Musk has for years endeavored to create products, like the rebranded Twitter and Grok, that are free from what he views as harmful mainstream constraints. Business Insider previously reported that Grok's army of "AI tutors" was training the bot on a host of dicey topics to compete with OpenAI's more "woke" ChatGPT. Musk on Saturday asked X users to respond to his post with examples of "divisive facts" that can be used in Grok's retraining. Gary Marcus, an AI hype critic and professor emeritus at New York University, compared Musk's effort to an Orwellian dystopia, which isn't the first time he's made the comparison. "Straight out of 1984. You couldn't get Grok to align with your own personal beliefs, so you are going to rewrite history to make it conform to your views," he wrote on X in response to Musk. A revamped Grok could have real-world impacts. In May, just as Musk was stepping back from his work in Washington, DC to refocus on his various companies, Reuters reported that DOGE was planning to expand its use of Grok to analyze government data. "They ask questions, get it to prepare reports, give data analysis," a source told Reuters, referring to how the bot was being used. Two other sources told the outlet that officials in the Department of Homeland Security had been encouraged to use it despite the fact that it hadn't been approved. A representative for the department told the New Republic that "DOGE hasn't pushed any employees to use any particular tools or products." Grok has also had security issues. In May, after what the company said was an "unauthorized modification" to its backend, the bot started to frequently refer to "white genocide" in South Africa. The company quickly resolved the issue and said it had conducted a "thorough investigation" and was "implementing measures to enhance Grok's transparency and reliability."
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
European leaders seek 'digital sovereignty' over tech infrastructure
1 of 3 | Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, unveils the latest RTX 5070 laptop processors on stage during the 2025 International CES at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on January 6. File Photo by James Atoa/UPI | License Photo June 21 (UPI) -- Leaders of many European nations say they need to do more to develop technological infrastructure to ensure digital sovereignty instead of relying on services from global tech firms. A recent forum discussion on the market dominance of global corporations assessed the "blurring of the boundaries between economic and political control" among European nations by tech firms. A consensus of attendees at the ongoing Berlin Summit 2025 agreed European nations need to coordinate their efforts to develop infrastructures to "avoid path dependencies and long-term dependence on global platform players," Forum New Economy reported on Friday. "European countries are highly dependent on companies from the USA and China in a variety of technological infrastructures, from cloud services and social media to generative artificial intelligence," Forum New Economy reported. Such companies dominate European markets and are increasing their control of digital infrastructures, innovation networks, supply chains, data flows and research agendas. An example is Microsoft earlier this year suspending the business email account for International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan. The action occurred within months of the ICC issuing a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the tech firm suspended Khan's ICC email account, Microsoft officials said it still is providing services for the ICC. The company also announced their intent to support the digital sovereignty of European nations. "We've operated in Europe for more than 40 years, and we have been and always will be a steadfast partner to Europe," Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in a social media post on Friday. Microsoft is supporting European sovereignty and that of its respective nations with several existing and new tech offerings, Nadella said. The services include Microsoft Sovereign Cloud, Data Guardian, External Key Management and Sovereign Private Cloud. The existing and new offerings "bring digital sovereignty to all European organizations" and"unlock new sovereign ways to run private sovereign clouds," Nadella said. "These new offerings build on decades of pioneering work in sovereign cloud solutions by ourselves and to our partners," he added.
Business Upturn
an hour ago
- Business Upturn
OCUFA Challenges Ontario Government's Narrative on Postsecondary Funding Crisis, Welcomes Review with Call for Meaningful Faculty Consultation
TORONTO, ON, June 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) today responded to the announcement by Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security (MCURES) Nolan Quinn of $55.8 million to expand teaching training seats across Ontario. While OCUFA welcomes any new investment in the postsecondary sector, the organization asserts that the Ontario government is not taking meaningful action to address the deep-seated financial crisis facing Ontario's world-class public universities. Minister Quinn highlighted that the investment would train up to 2,600 new teachers by 2027, prioritizing accelerated programs, French and technological education, and seats in northern, rural, Indigenous, and remote regions. However, when asked on the broader financial challenges confronting the sector, Minister Quinn attributed these issues to 'unilateral decisions' by the federal government regarding international student study permits. 'The financial struggles plaguing Ontario's postsecondary education sector are not a sudden development, nor are they solely a result of federal changes to international student permit caps', stated OCUFA President Nigmendra Narain. 'For decades, Ontario's universities have endured chronic underfunding, consistently ranking dead last in Canada in per-student funding. We are disappointed to see the Ontario Government downplay its own responsibility in supporting this vital sector.' OCUFA is deeply concerned that Ontario's universities are currently grappling with program closures, enrollment pauses, increasing precarity among faculty, and significant challenges in funding the province's most promising talent. The undergraduate programs that produce the students who enter teacher's college are not only underfunded, but are now facing cuts, limiting the academic preparation of teachers. While the $55.8 million for teaching pathways is a positive step, OCUFA emphasizes that these recent commitments only scratch the surface of the sector's needs. To simply reach Canada's national per-student funding average, Ontario requires an immediate investment of at least $2.78 billion, possibly more depending on the impact of declining international student enrolment. Without substantial and ongoing funding commitments, Ontario's position as a world leader in postsecondary education, research, and scholarship will continue to be at jeopardy. OCUFA welcomes the Minister's announcement that his ministry will be reviewing how funding is delivered across the postsecondary sector. 'We sincerely hope for meaningful consultation during this process and that the Ontario Government will ensure the voices of university faculty and academic librarians across the province are not only heard but respected,' said OCUFA Executive Director Jenny Ahn, echoing recommendations made at OCUFA's Funding Our Future: Keeping Universities Public conference in 2023. Founded in 1964, OCUFA represents more than 18,000 professors and academic librarians in 30 faculty associations across Ontario. It is committed to enhancing the quality of higher education in Ontario and recognizing the outstanding contributions of its members towards creating a world-class university system. For more information, please visit the OCUFA website at Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same. Ahmedabad Plane Crash
