Edito
Fundraising times are still tough for startups trying to push past those earliest stages. Unless they've managed to squeeze the words "artificial intelligence" into their slide deck. In which case: Let the good times roll!
According to CB Insights, funding to AI startups in Q2 2024 was $23.2 billion, up 59% from the previous quarter, setting a new quarterly record. Overall venture funding only increased 8% during that period. AI deal count rose 16% to 948 while overall venture deals fell 7%.
No shock: The US led the way with $15.2 billion in 476 deals – 66% of
global AI funding and 50% of total deals.
While the US appears to be sucking up all the AI oxygen, the troops on France's AI frontlines are holding their own with $956 million in the quarter, 2nd in Europe behind $1.5 billion in the UK. Overall, European startups (including Israel) had $4 billion for the quarter.
As is the case around the globe, the AI numbers are driven by a few big rounds. According to CB Insight, the top equity deals in Q2 2024 for France:
1. Mistral AI: $502 million Series B | June 11 | General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Headline
2. H: $120 million Convertible Note | May 8
3. Stonal: $108 million | May 6
4. H: $100 million Seed | April 29 | Accel, Aglae Ventures, Amazon, Creandum, Elaia Partners
5. FlexAI: $30 million Seed | Alpha Intelligence Capital, Elaia Partners, Heartcore Capital, Frst Capital, Motier Ventures
Top Deals:
- Preligens: $236 million acquisition by Safran
- Sonio: $93 million by acquisition Medison
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Chris O'Brien & Helen O'Reilly-Durand
The Headlines
🗞️ Kyutai, the AI research laboratory backed by Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, and Eric Schmidt, unveiled Moshi, its AI-based voice assistant capable of dialoguing with users in real-time. (France 24)
🗞️ After posting a big annual loss, Intel announced it was pausing a number of major European projects, including plans for an R&D hub for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing located in Paris. "The company had selected a location southwest of Paris as a new R&D center for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). The center is planned to open by the end of 2024 and will employ 450 people," according to Politico. "Intel added that the 'scope' of the project is undergoing adjustment, and France remains a choice for Intel’s future R&D center." (Politico)
🗞️ It's a Mistral, Mistral, Mistral AI World: The French open-source foundation model startup unleashed a barrage of announcements in July. First, the company signed a partnership with BNP Paribas which will use Mistral LLMs to develop GenAI features. Then Mistral confirmed a partnership with Dassault Systèmes. Then, Mistral introduced its Codestral Mamba model, GenAI software that can generate computer code. The company trained Codestral on 80 programming languages and says it can complete code, create tests, and help coders improve their skills. (Pymnts) (Mistral AI PR) The company has also released a language model called Mathstral which specializes in advanced mathematics, posting impressive scores on various benchmarks such as MATH and GSM8K. (Mistral PR) Then, Mistral AI and Nvidia announced Mistral Nemo 12B, a multilingual model trained with a new tokenizer that shows powerful multilingual and English performance. It supports 128k contexts too. (Nvidia, Mistral) Then, Mistral AI released Mistral Large 2, a 123B parameter model on par with the newest Llama 3 405b model. It is released under a permissive research license. (Mistral)
🗞️ A French antitrust regulator confirmed an antitrust probe into Nvidia. Benoit Coeure, president of the agency, told Reuters "that the company would be charged 'if the investigation is fruitful.'" (Reuters)
🗞️ President Emmanuel Macron’s Special Envoy for AI Anne Bouverot announced that the next AI Action Summit in France would be held on Feb. 11, 2025. The focus will be on "Converting Voluntary Commitments to 'Concrete Actions.'" (Washington AI Network podcast) (Axios) (Carnegie Endowment)
Other headlines:
🗞️ Meet the French startup taking on Disney and Pixar — with AI | Paris-based Animaj wants to start an AI revolution in the animated film industry | Sifted
🗞️ How Ask Mona plans to revolutionize Middle East's museum industry with generative AI | French company uses technology to curate personalized learning experiences for museums, heritage sites, and cultural organizations | The National
Olympics
The Paris 2024 Games are underway and observers are calling this the "AI Olympics." AI-driven services have been deployed across the Olympics to boost security, performance, and accuracy. Here are highlights of the coverage:
🏅The IOC Launches Its AI Agenda| The Olympic AI Agenda sets out a governance and oversight framework to identify and mitigate risk, and it will be a continuous process to leverage the insights and experience of prominent experts to support the deployment of AI for the Olympic Movement. (IOC)
🏅Intel unveils AI-Platform Innovation for Paris 2024 | Worldwide Olympic Partner Intel has unveiled a range of innovations, driven by artificial intelligence, that it will introduce for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 to enhance engagement for fans, organizers, athletes, and viewers around the world. (Olympics) (Intel)
🏅The AI Keeps The Score: The governing body of international gymnastics has pushed for an AI-assisted aid for judges. But what justifies the tremendous expense of such a system? The World Gymnastics Championship held an answer, and it might not have anything to do with gymnastics at all. (The Verge)
🏅France has deployed AI-driven surveillance cameras promising to provide unprecedented security. This has stirred fears of a Big Brother State among privacy advocates. At the Olympics, AI is watching you (Ars Technica) | (Fast Company)
🏅Paris gives first glimpse at AI's Olympic future | A number of Olympic partners are using the games to show off new AI initiatives, from chatbots for athletes to machine learning-generated performance recommendations to helping athletes get a better night's sleep in the Olympic Villa. | (Axios) (Tech.co) (Nature)
🏅AI’s presence at the Olympics provides a snapshot of how quickly AI is being implemented in so many different areas from live events to broadcast, advertising, athlete performance, law enforcement, and state surveillance. | (Fortune)
🏅AI Commercials: Viewers have been subjected to a barrage of AI-related ads, including multiple ads from Salesforce. (The Neuron) Google pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers. (France24)
The Interview
Faster, Cheaper, Better: Shreds.AI And The New GenAI Coding Economics
🗣️ In the race to unlock value from GenAI, CEO Soufiane Amar says the platform has the potential to revolutionize the costs and speed of writing code.
Products
☀️ DataDome launched "Discover," a free analysis tool available to platform customers that helps them better understand their attack surface in the context of sustained threat growth. (SiliconAngle)
☀️ Bioptimus, backed by Owkin, unveiled its first AI model for cancer analysis, an open-source AI model for pathology and disease detection. The French startup raised $35 million earlier this year. Its first AI model, dubbed "H-optimus-0", facilitates several tasks in medical diagnostics, such as identifying cancer cells and detecting genetic abnormalities in tumors. H-optimus-0 embeds 1.1 billion parameters and is trained on hundreds of millions of images extracted from over 500,000 histopathology slides from 4,000 clinical centers, according to the company. (Bioptimus)
☀️ Citroën introduced ChatGPT Navigation Assistance Chat, integrated into its in-vehicle infotainment that uses SoundHound's voice and audio recognition system. The feature enhances voice recognition to be more precise and responsive. And it acts as a travel companion capable of understanding and answering complex questions, or giving advice on different subjects (IE, tips on what to do in a city.)
☀️ Joe-AI released a Mixture of AI model that allows users to create a customized blend of foundation models from Mistral, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Cohere, and Microsoft using a single prompt. (Substack)
☀️ French consulting and communications company .becoming announced SOL.AIR, its creative AI production studio. (PR)
☀️ Deezer launched the beta version of its new AI-based feature, "Playlist with AI." The company will randomly select 5% of subscribers who can create new playlists from short descriptive texts along themes such as a specific atmosphere, musical genre, or musical decade. (PR)
☀️ AdCreative.ai unveiled AdLLM Spark, an AI designed exclusively for advertising. The company says it is designed to generate high-converting ad copy for all major advertising platforms by leveraging real advertising data.
☀️ nøblank released its first tool, which aims to assist web editors and copywriters by providing a brief in a matter of seconds, a draft, or even rephrasing content in strong language.
☀️ Seeqle has released a version of its AI-powered HR recruitment platform – developed for large and mid-sized businesses – for small businesses.
☀️ Sellia announced it has integrated GenAI into its platform, which aggregates all the internal and external data a Sales Manager or Credit Manager needs to make informed decisions. The GenAI automatically generates an instant, accurate risk assessment analysis of any company on demand. The Sellia team created an "API assistant," based on the LLM GPT-4-Turbo.
Posts
💼 MV Group, the French independent digital marketing group, appointed David Flouriot as its first Director of Data and AI at MV Group and is currently seeking to hire an AI Manager.
Government + Policy
👉 AI and Elections: During the recent European Parliament and French National Assembly elections, researchers at NGO AI Forensics found that the far-right used GenAI to spread anti-immigration and anti-Europe disinformation. (FranceInfo) During the recent French legislative elections, the left-wing coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) developed a chatbot based on ChatGPT called ChatNFP to counter arguments by the far-right parties. (Medium)
👉 The Autorité de la concurrence, France's competition authority, released its first opinion on the functioning of GenAI markets. (Opinion)
👉 French data-protection association CNIL published its guidelines for responsible use of GenAI. (CNIL)
👉 AI Diplomacy: France’s Permanent Representative to OECD, Amelie de Montchalin, said that India and France are working together as the two nations share the same vision on what artificial intelligence (AI) can bring as a tool for more development, innovation, and prosperity. France is also focusing on enhancing economic cooperation with Taiwan, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and energy, according to French Office in Taipei Director Franck Paris.
👉 European Commission: Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected to the presidency of the European Commission and has detailed an ambitious startup agenda for the next 5 years that includes AI Factories to give startups and industry access to supercomputing and a new European AI Research Council to pool all resources in the AI field. (Sifted)
Deals
🛒 Iktos, a company specializing in AI and robotics for the design of new drugs, has acquired Synsight, a spin-out from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research that uses high-content AI and cell imaging to accelerate the discovery of new drug candidates. (Fusacq, PR)
🛒 Ospi acquired Alicante, an expert in medical coding and health data enhancement using Artificial Intelligence. Alicante was founded in 1999 by former hospital researchers in Lillee as well as from INSERM and CNRS laboratories; The company specializes in hospital data, offering real-time analysis of medical and
analysis of medical and administrative records. Ospi is already present in over 1,100 healthcare establishments and will use this acquisition to expand its data and AI features for hospitals. (Fusacq)
🛒 Mobsuccess has acquired Sensego, an AI pioneer in digital marketing. This is the 4th acquisition in 3 years by the Mobsuccess group, which provides a foundation of solutions designed to equip digital marketing for networked retailers and distributed brands. Accelerated by Meta at Station F, Sensego has designed and developed a technology that continuously optimizes the performance of activation campaigns. Sensego's AI can identify campaign scenarios based on variables such as bid thresholds, audience type, and type of creative, multiply them, and replay them continuously to automatically refine the contours of the campaign. (Focusur)
🛒 Philadelphia-based Crossbeam and Paris-based Reveal have merged in an all-stock deal that unites their respective customer data-sharing platforms to create "the world’s largest repository of ecosystem data, a critical input to all AI tools and copilots used by go-to-market teams." The merged company will be called Crossbeam and the HQ will be in Philly, but the company will keep its Paris office. (PR, Technical.ly)
🛒 Montreal-based OPAL-RTA has acquired 4D-Virtualiz, which has developed a real-time 3D simulation platform that uses AI to help customers develop their robotic systems through increased testing capacity to improve safety and optimize use in real conditions. (LinkedIn, PR)
🛒 Germany's Merck KGaA announced plans to acquire Unity-SC, a French provider of metrology and inspection solutions inspection equipment for the semiconductor industry for €155 million. Merck said the technology was essential to improve the reliability of semiconductors designed for "Artificial Intelligence (AI), High-Performance Computing (HPC), High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)." (PR)
Foundings
🚀 AmonAI: Research, development, creation, production, marketing, purchase or sale, and rental of IT data management solutions by artificial intelligence, in particular those relating to public works and building construction. The platform generates answers to any question about your construction site using AmonAI, a RAG-based LLM Assistant. Founded on June 17, 2024, by Léonie Mathian, Naima Tijani, and Alexis Moret who developed the project via the X-HEC Entrepreneurs incubator. The startup won the jury prize at the HEC Startup Launchpad Pitch Contest earlier this year.
🚀 Ektos: Development of software and programs, especially for cloud computing and artificial intelligence platforms. Provision, automation, and management of IT infrastructures for hosting artificial intelligence and intensive computing models. Support, expertise, and advice in infrastructure hosting, artificial intelligence, and software development. Founded July 1, 2024. The co-founders are Tran Dang and Guillaume Renault.
🚀 Michel AI: Michel is a conversational AI tool that saves recruiters time at every stage of the process. Founded June 26, 2024. Co-founders are CTO Mathieu Rasse (previously founded Meta-API, a SaaS platform that gathers data through APIs) and Fabien Ben N'sir.
Patents
AI-related patent applications published by the French Intellectual Property authority.
AI for Personalized Hair and Skin Products: L'Oreal
Published: July 5, 2024
Patent: FR3144500
Method for determining at least one colorimetric parameter characterizing a cosmetic composition, the associated electronic determination device, and the computer program product.
GenAI for Simulating Cyber Attack Scenarios: Airbus
Published: July 19, 2024
Patent: FR3145048
A system is configured to automatically generate content from scenario-level constraints corresponding to an influence graph between actors in a cyber influence simulation and informational struggle scenario.
AI Funding News
What: Orus, AI-powered energy flexibility that enables commercial building operators to automatically shift flexible loads off carbon peak times, thereby supporting the balance and resilience of the grid in exchange for discounts on their energy bills.
Why: The power grid is often strained to deliver new sources of alternative energy. Better management of the flow of energy could reduce demand and create more capacity.
Funding: €2.2 million Pre-Seed
Who: Co-Founders are CEO Alexandre Girard, COO Fanny Sauvée, and CTO Théophile Karila
Investors: b2venture led the round with Asterion and participation from Ring Capital, plus Business Angels Pierre Trémolières (Accenta.ai) and Myriam Maestroni (e5t).
What's Next: Orus Energy will use the funding to accelerate product development and expand features.
What: Micropep, developed a biotech platform called Krisalix that uses GenAI to rapidly discover new micropeptide-based active ingredients.
Why: Micropeptides are key for designing new, environmentally safe crop protection products that can increase global food production.
Funding: $29 million Series B
Who: Co-Founders are CEO Thomas Laurent and Scientific Advisor Jean-Philippe Combier
Investors: The round was led by Zebra Impact Ventures and BPI Green Tech Investment. Fall Line Capital, FMC Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, Supernova Invest, and IRDI Capital Investissement also participated, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $51.8 million.
What's Next: Micropep plans to use the Series B funding to accelerate its go-to-market strategy, conduct regulatory studies, expand R&D, and seek key industry and manufacturing partnerships.
What: Apiday, an ESG reporting and data management platform that uses AI to automate data extraction and analysis.
Why: To help companies and investment funds manage their ESG strategies.
Funding: €10 million
Who: Co-founders Edouard Audi & Charles Moury
Investors: Daphni, Aenu, Swen Capital, Galion.exe, Speedinvest, and Revent
What's Next: The funding will allow the startup to enhance its technology and continue adapting its offering to meet the demands of Private Equity funds and mid-sized companies (ETIs), particularly in the context of the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive).
Announcements
📢 Meta, Hugging Face, and Scaleway Announce a New AI Accelerator Program for European Startups | The AI Startup Program is based at STATION F in Paris, allowing European startups to benefit from the resources available at the world’s largest startup campus. With the support of the HEC incubator, the program will accelerate five startups in the MVP or product stage, from September 2024 to February 2025. | Startups can apply until 16 August 2024 here | (Scaleway PR) (Scaleway's Pascal Condamine)
📢 Call for Startup "AI and inclusion in IDF" projects | Diversidays, France's leading association for equal opportunity, is today opening applications for the 12th edition of its Leadership Program, dedicated to entrepreneurs in the Paris region with a project linked to inclusion and artificial intelligence. Deadline: Sept. 12 | Apply here
Events
📆 International Conference on Hybrid Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (ICHIAI ) | September 4 | Marseille | Information
📆 Google GenAI Startup School at Station F | September 11 | Are you a developer, product manager, data scientist, or CTO? No matter your level in AI, Google has crafted a unique learning program just for you.| (Sign Up)
📆 AI, Education, Training: Discover the emergence of AI in edtech and its adoption in France, both in training and in education and research. | September 12 | Tickets: €24.50
📆 2024 International Conference on Image Processing and Artificial Intelligence (IPAI 2024) | September 12 | Register
📆 B2B ROCKS at Station F | September 25th & 26th | The major annual B2B SaaS conference will have a strong focus on AI this year. Featuring execs from Aircall, Asana, Dashlane, Stripe and more. Before going on vacation (or to the Olympic Games), secure your spot here now! (Buy Tickets: €850 to €1,500)
📆 FDDAY: | September 18 | The annual France Digitale conference is expected to have several AI-related panels. | Registration
📆 NoCode Summit: Lyon | September 26 | Discover how NoCode, LowCode, and GenAI can advance your projects. | Registration
📆 AI discussion by Laurent Bibard and Nicolas Sabouret | October 2 | Philosopher Laurent Bibard, professor at ESSEC Business School, and computer scientist Nicolas Sabouret, professor at the University of Paris-Saclay, question our vision of artificial intelligence as a technology. They invite you to question the uses we make of them, what we expect from them, and what we dream of. | Information
📆 Big Data & AI Paris | October 15 & 16 | The most comprehensive exhibition of AI and Big Data stakeholders in Europe with more than 230 exhibitors, including large technology groups, pure AI players and data, specialized consultants, professional training actors, and innovative start-ups. | Buy tickets
📆 Unleash World | October 16 & 17 | HR + AI conference | Registration
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