Want to reach an audience of more than 30,000 readers each month? The French Tech Journal is the leading English-language media platform covering France's dynamic tech ecosystem. With 31,000 + engaged readers across key global markets and consistently high engagement rates, our sponsorships provide unparalleled access to decision-makers in French tech.
ISO 27001 is the gold standard for information security—but getting certified can feel like navigating a maze. That’s why Vanta has created a straightforward ISO 27001 Compliance Checklist to help you cut through the complexity and take action with confidence. Whether you're starting from scratch or refining your existing program, this resource lays out exactly what you need to do—step by step.
Headlines
🗞️ Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform based in NYC but founded by Frenchies, has acquired French robotics startup Pollen Robotics, marking its first major venture into hardware. Pollen is best known for Reachy 2, a humanoid robot equipped with VR compatibility and advanced manipulation capabilities, already utilized in research institutions like Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. The acquisition reflects Hugging Face's commitment to open-source principles, as the company plans to make both the software and hardware designs of Reachy 2 openly accessible. This approach aims to democratize robotics by allowing developers and enthusiasts to modify, improve, and even 3D print components of the robot.
Pollen Robotics was founded in 2016 in Bordeaux, France, by Matthieu Lapeyre, Alice Coucke, and Pierre Rouanet with the mission to create open, ethical, and accessible robots. The team gained recognition for developing Reachy, an open-source humanoid robot designed for human-robot interaction research and experimentation.
This move builds upon Hugging Face's previous initiatives in robotics, including the launch of the LeRobot open-source robotics code library in 2024, led by former Tesla engineer Remi Cadene. The acquisition of Pollen Robotics brings approximately 20 new employees into Hugging Face, including Pollen’s co-founders, further strengthening its robotics expertise. By integrating Pollen's technology and team, Hugging Face aims to bridge the gap between AI software and physical robotics, fostering innovation in embodied AI applications. The company envisions a future where AI-powered robots are open, affordable, and widely accessible, encouraging collaboration across the global developer community.
"We believe robotics could be the next frontier unlocked by AI — and it should be open, affordable, and private. Our vision: a future where everyone in the community, from hobbyists to enterprises, can build or use robot assistants or games, starting from open solutions instead of closed, remote controlled, hardware," said Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief scientist at Hugging Face, in a statement. | Hugging Face, Sifted, Wired, TechCrunch
🗞️ French President Emmanuel Macron launched the "Choose France for Science" initiative to attract international researchers, particularly those affected by recent U.S. policy changes under President Donald Trump. The initiative, managed by the French National Research Agency (ANR), offers co-funding for French institutions to host foreign scientists in fields such as health, climate, AI, and energy. This move comes amid significant cuts to research funding and increased political tensions in the U.S., leading to job losses and concerns over academic freedom. Macron emphasized France's commitment to research and innovation, inviting scientists worldwide to continue their work in a supportive European environment. Prominent figures like Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun praised the initiative as a strategic opportunity for France to bolster its scientific community. | Reuters, ANR
🗞️ France’s PEPR (Priority Research Program and Equipment) in Artificial Intelligence has launched a major call for applications to appoint up to 15 AI research chairs across the country. This initiative, part of the national AI strategy under France 2030, aims to strengthen France’s position in foundational and interdisciplinary AI research. Selected chairholders will receive substantial funding and support to lead ambitious projects that advance the state of AI science and foster collaboration between academia and industry. | Inria
🗞️ AI-generated music now makes up 18% of all tracks uploaded to Deezer, according to the music streaming platform’s data from the first quarter of 2024. That’s around 15 million out of 100 million total tracks, with most AI-generated content uploaded by a small number of prolific creators using generative tools. Deezer has responded by developing technology to detect and label AI-generated music, aiming to maintain transparency for users and fairness for human artists. The company emphasized that while AI can support creativity, it must be used responsibly to avoid flooding platforms with low-quality or deceptive content. |Reuters
🗞️ A Russian disinformation campaign known as Storm-1516, led by former Florida deputy sheriff John Mark Dougan, has targeted France with AI-generated false narratives, resulting in over 55 million views on social media between December 2024 and March 2025. These fabricated stories include a fake confession from a Chadian migrant about a rape, a false claim that Ukrainian President Zelensky purchased a French bank for €1.2 billion, and a deepfake video alleging sexual abuse by France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron. The surge in disinformation coincides with France's increased support for Ukraine and political tensions surrounding far-right leader Marine Le Pen's disqualification from the 2027 presidential race. French officials have acknowledged the escalating threat, noting that AI technologies have enabled manipulation on an unprecedented scale. Newsguard
🗞️ An AI-driven research project identified 128 verified instances of climate misinformation across 18 media outlets, averaging more than 10 cases per week in France over a three-month period. The study was a joint project by French NGOs Science Feedback, QuotaClimat, and Data For Good to monitor climate misinformation on French television and radio. Notably, 85% of these instances originated from private media, with Sud Radio alone accounting for 31% of the total. The misinformation frequently targeted topics such as renewable energy and electric vehicles, and its prevalence spiked during significant political events, including national climate policy consultations. Despite the urgency of climate issues, only 2% of traditional media airtime was dedicated to environmental topics, highlighting a significant gap in accurate reporting. The report calls for increased responsibility from journalists, regulators, and advertisers, and emphasizes the need for public awareness to combat the spread of climate misinformation. | Science Feedback
Other Headlines
🗞️ We have spent “millions” on AI training data, says Photoroom CEO, who wants to make the internet “more beautiful” | The CEO and co-founder of Photoroom talks about his career and plans for the photo-editing app. | Tech EU
🗞️ Mantle8 uses AI to pinpoint natural hydrogen in French mountain | Where traditional explorers search for hydrogen like needles in haystacks, Mantle8 has built what it calls a “hydrogen-generating system” model. Think of it as going beyond the treasure map to understanding the entire geology of the treasure chest, the locks, the keys, and even the pirates who buried it. | Greenprophet
ICYMI
🗞️ FlexAI: Pioneering Universal AI Compute Infrastructure | Modern AI workloads were being forced to run on computing architectures designed decades ago. FlexAI wants to create a faster, more flexible system that enables rapid scaling. | The French Tech Journal
🗞️ Descartes Underwriting: Doubling Down On Climate Risk As Insurance Industry Retreats | Chief Science Officer Kévin Dedieu: "AI represents between 2-5% of our tech investments. Next year, we’re increasing that by 10%, with more resources dedicated to AI and using it for our core models. The cost of AI is relatively low, but its impact is huge.” | The French Tech Journal
🗞️ Growl's AI Boxing Bag Delivers A Knockout Fitness Experience | A pair of French entrepreneurs in Texas have launched Growl, a connected fitness startup that reimagines the traditional boxing bag as an AI-powered, interactive home coach. As the company moves towards commercialization, CEO and co-founder Léo Desrumaux explains the vision. | The French Tech Journal
🗣️ How Delos Is Building an AI Operating System for Business
Imagine the typical knowledge worker's day in 2025: bouncing between a dozen specialized AI tools, each siloed in its own ecosystem. One platform for document summarization, another for meeting transcription, a third for writing assistance, and yet more for translation, search, and other AI-powered tasks.
The result is fragmented workflows, subscription fatigue, and a productivity promise that remains frustratingly unfulfilled.
This is the problem that Paris-based startup Delos aims to solve. Founded by brothers Pierre and Thibaut de la Grand'rive in the summer of 2023, Delos has developed what amounts to an operating system for artificial intelligence in the workplace – a sovereign, unified platform that orchestrates multiple AI models into a coherent experience. The company unveiled the platform last week and also announced a €2.5 million fundraising.
In a landscape dominated by American tech giants and specialized point solutions, Delos believes it can succeed by reimagining the entire workspace as a natively AI-powered environment where technologies work together rather than competing for the user's attention. Delos.so orchestrates multiple AI models (including ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral, and Llama) into a cohesive platform with seven integrated applications.
"We started from scratch. Rather than adapting our work methods to AI, we built an AI adapted to our work methods," said CEO Pierre de la Grand'rive. "Our ambition is to offer generative AI that is truly useful to employees."
AI Funding News
📇 Company: Brink Therapeutics
🔍 Description: Biotech startup developing programmable recombinase-based genome editing technology that enables precise insertion of long DNA sequences without double-strand breaks, offering a safer and more efficient alternative to CRISPR-Cas9 for cell and gene therapies.
💻 Website: https://www.brinktx.com
📍 HQ City: Paris, France
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €3.5 million
🏦 Investors: Kurma Partners, Breega, Kima Ventures
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Jonathan Naccache (CEO), Harry Kemble (CTO)
🗞️ News: FrenchWeb
📇 Company: CustomsBridge
🔍 Description: Developer of an AI-powered platform that simplifies and automates customs procedures for importers and exporters, enhancing compliance and reducing administrative burdens.
💻 Website: https://www.customsbridge.fr
📍 HQ City: Nice, France
🧗 Round: Series A
💰 Amount Raised: €2.5 million
🏦 Investors: Soget
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Loïc Poisot, Charles Devaux, Hamza Saouli.
🗞️ News: Les Echos
📇 Company: Klaimy
🔍 Description: AI-powered platform helping insurance companies process simple claims in under a minute, saving up to 70% in operational costs.
💻 Website: https://www.getklaimy.com/
📍 HQ City: Les Ulis, France
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €1.2 million
🏦 Investors: Insurtech Gateway, Tenity, U-Investors
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Juan Barragan, Yazid Hadni, Amira Nakouri
🗞️ News: EU Startups, LinkedIn
📇 Company: BARY
🔍 Description: Metaverse and VR solutions for B2B tradeshows, enabling enhanced interaction, lead generation, remote collaboration with blockchain integration, and TheSubtil.ai – its AI-powered platform.
💻 Website: https://bary.ai
📍 HQ City: Paris, France
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: Undisclosed
🏦 Investors: Netgem
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Mathias Cohen, Elie Zerbib
🗞️ News: LinkedIn
Announcements
SISTA AI | A program dedicated to accelerating the creation and growth of startups founded by women in AI. Women founders in tech are one of the key drivers of innovation, growth, and employment across Europe. | Deadline: June 17 | Apply
Emerging AI: Pitch competition France Regionals | Join HubSpot for Startups, and our ecosystem guests VC in this exciting global competition dedicated to discovering new AI startups. We hope to find and support the next great innovation in AI and offer a global platform to the best founders of France. The founder/winner of France will have the opportunity to present at our world final in June and win a cash prize of $6000, as well as $100,000 in free software. | Deadline: May 22 | Apply
Events
☀️ Sponsors' events ☀️
📆 Viva Technology | June 11 - 14 | VivaTech is Europe's biggest startup and tech event. The ninth edition is taking place in Paris, at the Expo Porte de Versailles venue. VivaTech contributes to the acceleration of innovation by connecting startups, technology leaders, large companies, and investors addressing the world's greatest challenges. | Buy Tickets
The Calendar
📆 MKIA 25 | April 29 | The Maddy Keynote, organized by Maddyness, announces its special edition: the MKIA, the event that transforms the broad guidelines on AI into concrete initiatives for the economic leaders of tomorrow. Far from abstract tech-symbol discourse, MKIA deciphers AI in a concrete and educational way through round tables, keynotes, case studies, and a zone for startups. It enables all actors – start-ups, corporations, investors, and institutions – to take ownership of the challenges and opportunities of its adoption. | Register
📆 GOSIM AI Paris 2025 | May 6-7 | The Global Open-Source Innovation Meetup will spotlight the latest advancements in 6 Conference Tracks: AI Model, AI Infra, AI Apps, Embodied AI, AI for Science, and Global Open-Source AI Collaboration, driving significant progress in global open-source AI collaboration. A highlight of the event is the introduction of GOSIM AI Spotlight, a global initiative to select 10 outstanding open-source AI projects for showcase and technical exchange, further accelerating AI innovation. | Registration
📆 Revolution Summit 2025 | May 13 | In the era of the fourth anthropological and industrial revolution driven by the cloud, data, and AI, our ambition is to develop systemic thinking to address the economic, academic, and technological challenges of tomorrow. | Registration
📆 Google Cloud Summit France 2025 | May 22 | Join the annual Google Cloud event to discover the latest technological innovations in generative AI, security, application development, collaboration, and more. | Register
📆 {Tech: Paris} AI Hackathon #1 | May 24 | Join us for the first-ever {Tech: Europe} AI Hackathon in Paris — a full weekend dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what's possible with artificial intelligence. Whether you're a seasoned builder or just getting started, this is your chance to connect, create, and compete alongside Europe's top talent. | Register
📆 The Paris AI Conference 2025 | June 16 | The Paris AI Conference 2025 gathers 250 of France's AI Experts, Founders, Investors, and Enthusiasts, for an evening of content and networking. This event is hosted by Startup Network Europe. | Register
📆 Stripe Tour Paris | June 17 | Join us for Stripe Tour, our global roadshow that brings together business leaders in major cities to discuss the most important trends in payments and financial technology. | Register
📆 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
👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: chris@frenchtechjournal.com / helen@frenchtechjournal.com 👋🏻
