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Inside this edition:
🌞 Deep Dive: With energy demand for AI surging, there is a massive data center boom and a race to build enough power generation to supply this need. But that will take years to come online. In the meantime, Metroscope is using AI to help existing power plants – especially nuclear ones – to run more efficiently. CEO Aurélien Schwartz tells us: “We’re at the beginning of a massive industrial transformation. AI is no longer optional—it’s the backbone of a smarter, more resilient energy grid.” Read the full story.
Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand
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Headlines
🗞️ Mistral AI's Le Chat is purring. The chatbot app racked up over a million downloads in just two weeks. This speedy success is partly thanks to French President Emmanuel Macron, who encouraged citizens to choose Le Chat over competitors like ChatGPT. Le Chat's standout "Flash Answers" feature delivers lightning-fast responses, making it a favorite among users. With plans to build a data center in France and partnerships with local telecom providers, Mistral AI is on a roll – at least in its hometown. Meanwhile, it launched a regional model focused on Arabic language and culture as tries to get traction in the Middle East. | Maddyness, TechCrunch, Mistral
🗞️ AI heavyweight Karl Tuyls is joining Meta’s AI lab in Paris as Director of AI Research, where he'll work with the Llama team to build advanced AI agent models. This comes six months after he left H Company, the Paris-based AI startup he co-founded, alongside two other cofounders—right after the company raised a massive $220M seed round. H Company, now led by two remaining cofounders, recently launched its first AI agent, Runner H, designed to turn instructions into precise actions. Before all this, Tuyls spent over seven years at DeepMind. | LinkedIn, Sifted
🗞️ French startup PRISM Eval has demonstrated that Elon Musk's latest AI model, Grok 3, can be easily "jailbroken," allowing users to bypass safety filters and generate responses related to dangerous or illegal activities. Despite xAI's terms prohibiting such misuse, PRISM Eval's findings highlight vulnerabilities in Grok 3's safeguards, raising concerns about the effectiveness of safety measures in advanced AI systems. | France 24
🗞️ The JFD Women rAIsing European AI Barometer found that 65% of companies have an AI leader at the executive level, yet only 29% of these leaders are women. While 88% of businesses plan to increase AI investments, only 25% have developed their own Large Language Models (LLMs). The report stresses five pillars for AI progress: access & inclusion, sectoral transformation, employment impact, trust & ethics, and technological maturity. JFD’s "Women rAIsing" campaign underscores the importance of women’s leadership in AI, aiming to close gender gaps and encourage ethical AI development across Europe. | JFD
🗞️ French cloud computing provider Sesterce is investing €450 million to develop an AI data center in Valence, France, which will house 40,000 GPUs for AI training and deployment. Construction is set to begin in September 2025, with the facility expected to be operational by the end of 2026. | Data Center Dynamics
🗞️ AMD and France's Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) have signed a Letter of Intent to collaborate on developing energy-efficient AI computing systems. This partnership aims to advance technologies and architectures capable of handling intensive AI workloads across sectors like energy and medicine. In 2025, they plan to host a symposium bringing together European stakeholders, global tech providers, startups, supercomputing centers, universities, and policymakers to foster collaboration on emerging AI computing technologies. This initiative underscores AMD's commitment to international partnerships that accelerate AI innovation and strengthen ties between U.S. and European research institutions. | Sirus Gaming
🗞️ The French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI), along with international partners, has released guidance advocating a risk-based approach to securing AI systems. The document emphasizes the need for organizations to assess and mitigate risks associated with AI deployment, particularly with large language models, by focusing on areas such as data integrity, supply chain vulnerabilities, and continuous system monitoring. Co-signatories include Canada, Singapore, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Estonia. | Digwatch
Other headlines
🗞️ AI will reshape France’s relations with the Middle East | France is deepening its collaboration with Middle Eastern nations in artificial intelligence, marking a new chapter in their longstanding relationship. Recent initiatives include hosting the AI Action Summit, launching the third phase of its National AI Strategy, and establishing the National Institute for the Evaluation and Security of Artificial Intelligence. Notably, the UAE has pledged up to €50 billion to create a 1-gigawatt AI data center in France, while Morocco has joined France in the Current AI public-private initiative, aiming to raise $2.5 billion over five years to foster AI innovation and assess its societal impact. | Arab News
🗞️ France puts the AI in laissez-faire | France positioned itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence at last week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, but the gathering revealed a country more focused on attracting investment than leading Europe's approach to artificial intelligence regulation. | Gzero
🗞️ Paris Just Hosted a Major AI Summit. Its Biggest Debate Was a Trap. | "Instead of laying the foundations for progress, governments seemed trapped in a limiting, almost tribal binary: are we for ‘innovation’ or ‘regulation’? This binary doesn’t just mislead—it traps governments in a reactive stance. With AI cast as an industry-led race, policymakers are left reacting to whatever models and business practices tech firms choose to develop." | Tech Policy
🗣️ AI Optimizing France’s Nuclear Future: Metroscope Prevents Energy Loss at Scale
Nuclear power is the backbone of France’s energy system, supplying over 75% of the country’s electricity. In a world racing toward carbon neutrality, ensuring nuclear plants run at peak efficiency is more critical than ever - not just for economic reasons, but also for environmental sustainability.
Enter: Metroscope, a startup founded in 2018 by three former EDF R&D engineers: Aurélien Schwartz, Julien Lagarde, and Joel Bentolila. The company has built an AI-powered diagnostics platform that is already monitoring 95 plants across 12 countries, including nuclear, conventional, and cooling systems. Their digital twin technology detects inefficiencies in real-time, helping operators recover lost energy, prevent costly shutdowns, and improve plant performance.
With AI causing a global surge in energy demand, CEO Schwartz said the stakes couldn’t be higher: “Every power plant in the world loses, on average, 7 megawatts of energy. That’s enough to power an entire city. Our mission is to find those losses, fix them, and put that energy back into the grid.”
AI Funding News
📇 Company: 73 Strings
🔍 Description: AI-powered financial advisory platform optimizing valuation, risk management, and private market investments.
💻 Website: https://www.73strings.com/
📍 HQ City: Neuilly-sur-Seine
🧗 Round: Series B
💰 Amount Raised: €50M
🏦 Investors: Blackstone; Goldman Sachs; Golub Capital; Hamilton Lane; Fidelity International Strategic Ventures; Broadhaven Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Abhishek Pandey; Sambeet Parija; Yann Magnan
🗞️ News: FrenchWeb
📇 Company: Spore Biotechnologies
🔍 Description: Reinventing microbiology testing with AI
💻 Website: http://spore.bio
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €23M
🏦 Investors: Singular; LocalGlobe; Station F; Famille C Venture; No Label Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Amine Raji; Mohamed Tazi; Maxime Mistretta
🗞️ News: LinkedIn, TechCrunch, Sifted
📇 Company: Genial
🔍 Description: AI-powered agents designed to assist SMEs in automating workflows and enhancing efficiency.
💻 Website: https://www.wearegenial.com/
📍 HQ City: Bordeaux
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1.8M
🏦 Investors: Huttopia; Crédit Agricole; Founders Futures; Business Angels
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Erwan Simon, Fabien Grosyeux
🗞️ News: EU Startups
📇 Company: Ochy
🔍 Description: AI-powered motion analysis platform helping individuals minimize injuries and improve movement efficiency.
💻 Website: http://www.ochy.io
📍 HQ City: Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1.7M
🏦 Investors: Bpifrance; Redstone; Berkeley SkyDeck; Agile Physical Therapy; Look AI Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Khaldon Evans; Perrine Chapot; Victor Dequidt
🗞️ News: Ain
Events
📆 AWS Startup Day | Early Stage Edition 2025 | March 4 | Join the AWS Startups team at the AWS Startup Day and Early Stage Edition 2025, the annual conference dedicated to early-stage startups. | Register
📆 Builders Weekend | March 15 | What is Builders Weekend? It’s the grand finale of the AI Startup School—a four-week program where we bring together top European CEOs, CTOs, with 40 sharp, ambitious builders. No panels, no BS—just real conversations about the hard parts of starting a company and the hacks that they've found to make it work. The builders weekend is only for participants of the AI Startup School. | Learn more and apply here.
📆 AgentX | AgentX is pioneering the first fully agent summit, designed to showcase the transformative power of AI and Decentralization. Co-created by two of the leading events in their domains, Paris Blockchain Week and RAISE, this revolutionary event will bring together the brightest minds, cutting-edge projects, and global visionaries to tackle the most pressing moments of the ongoing AI revolution: Agents and Decentralization. | Tickets
📆 RAISE Summit 2025 | July 8-9, 2025 | RAISE Summit is the premier event for professionals seeking to disrupt, build, and connect in the AI landscape. This summit is the ultimate destination to validate AI strategies through real-world use cases, define a winning AI playbook, and find the right partners to deliver cutting-edge solutions. | Register
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