French president Emmanuel Macron has spent years dreaming aloud of a homegrown artificial intelligence giant. The AI disruption is coming, he told WIRED in 2018, and “I want to be part of it.” After that interview, he campaigned hard to turn France into a startup nation, home to the kind of companies that could rival American and Chinese behemoths.
She points to France’s 2012 “les pigeons” movement, a campaign by angry internet entrepreneurs that opposed Socialist president François Hollande’s plan to dramatically raise taxes for founders. Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, is worried not only about France’s ability to attract overseas talent, but also about how appealing the next government will be to foreign investors.