NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang hits the Dome Stage at VivaTech for his GTC Paris keynote on June 11. Expect insights, surprises, and major AI reveals from NVIDIA & one of tech’s most visionary leaders.
Headlines
🗞️ Dailymotion, the French video-sharing platform owned by Canal+, has announced its acquisition of Mojo, a French AI-powered video creation app developed by Archery. Mojo enables users to produce videos using features like automatic subtitles and video generation from images or text, and boasts over 300,000 paying subscribers. This strategic move aims to position Dailymotion as a leading European alternative to platforms like YouTube and TikTok by integrating Mojo's innovative tools into its offerings for professional clients and advertisers. Founded in 2018 by Jean Patry and Francescu Santoni, Mojo is a profitable company with a team of 30 employees. | Maddyness
🗞️ French startup Greenbids, known for its AI-driven solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of digital advertising, has been acquired by Nasdaq-listed company Perion Network. The goal is to integrate Greenbids' innovative technology into Perion's advertising platforms, enhancing sustainability in digital marketing. Greenbids' team is expected to continue developing solutions that align with Perion's commitment to responsible advertising. | Les Echos
🗞️ AI-generated tracks now make up 18% of the content on Deezer, up from just 10% in January 2025. One viral example featured a fake version of Angèle's voice covering "Saiyan," which became so popular that the real singer performed it at a concert. Researcher Darius Afchar of Deezer says AI music is often used for fraud, with 70% of AI-generated tracks being streamed by bots to capture royalties. | Radio France
🗞️ French IT group Atos has unveiled its new strategic and transformation plan, "Genesis," aimed at restoring sustainable and profitable growth. A key component of this plan is a significant investment in artificial intelligence: Atos plans to invest €500 million in research and development and €100 million in startups, with a focus on AI technologies. Additionally, the company is launching a new data and AI business line to capitalize on emerging opportunities in this sector. These initiatives are part of Atos's broader strategy to simplify governance, exit non-core markets, and enhance profitability by 2028. | Reuters, Atos
🗞️ The Jean Zay supercomputer, one of the most powerful and widely used AI supercomputers in France and Europe, has received a significant upgrade, quadrupling its computing power to 125.9 petaflops and expanding its storage to 100 petabytes. This enhanced capability will support a wide range of research fields, including biomedical research, astrophysics, self-driving technology, and cultural studies, available free of charge for open research. Key projects already benefiting from this power include AI applications in astronomical observation, medical diagnostics, and large language models. Jean Zay's eco-efficient design, powered by Nvidia GPUs and warm-water cooling, also contributes to sustainability, making it a central asset for the European AI community. | CNRS
🗞️ Lifen, an AI-powered health data company, has reached profitability for its core product, Lifen Care, with an annual recurring revenue of €20 million. The company recorded a 20% annual growth in revenue and invested 37% of its earnings in R&D in 2024. Lifen's AI solutions currently support 800 hospitals, 20,000 healthcare professionals, and 17 million patients, processing over 4 million medical documents per month.
🗞️ French newspaper Le Monde has partnered with U.S.-based AI startup Perplexity to enhance its digital offerings. This collaboration grants Perplexity access to Le Monde's content to improve its AI-powered search engine responses, while Le Monde leverages Perplexity's technology to develop new AI-driven products. Notably, Le Monde has launched a conversational chatbot, powered by Perplexity, that provides readers with real-time answers based exclusively on the newspaper's articles. This initiative aims to expand Le Monde's audience, enhance its technological capabilities, and create new revenue streams, all while maintaining journalistic independence and supporting its staff through revenue-sharing agreements. | Reuters, Radio France
🗞️ AI is making a buzz at the Cannes Film Festival. Dalloway, the latest thriller by Yann Gozlan, explores the dark side of artificial intelligence through the story of Clarissa (Cécile de France), a struggling writer who moves into a high-tech artist residency. There, she is assigned an AI assistant named Dalloway, voiced by singer Mylène Farmer, who initially seems helpful but becomes increasingly intrusive and manipulative. Adapted from Tatiana de Rosnay's novel Les Fleurs de l'ombre, the film delves into themes of control, isolation, and the blurring line between human and machine. Gozlan, known for his psychological thrillers, uses Dalloway to explore modern anxieties about AI, transforming a seemingly supportive technology into a chilling force of oppression. | Nice Matin, Cannes Festival
ICYMI
🗞️ Alan Goes All-In on AI | Six months after announcing a Series F funding round of €173 million at a €4 billion valuation, the French insurtech is accelerating its embrace of AI to transform its operations and products. | The French Tech Journal
🗞️ How Delos Is Building an AI Operating System for Business | CEO Pierre de la Grand'rive: "Our ambition is to offer generative AI that is truly useful to employees." | The French Tech Journal
🗞️ 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
🗣️ VSORA: The French AI Chipmaker Taking on NVIDIA with High-Performance, Cost-Efficient AI Hardware
VSORA, a French AI chip company, has emerged with ambitious plans to disrupt the market dominated by industry giants such as NVIDIA.
As the AI hardware market continues to evolve rapidly, VSORA is positioning itself as a serious challenger with an innovative architecture focused on solving the cost per query challenge. The company represents Europe's hopes to compete in the high-stakes race to power the next generation of AI applications.
Following its €40 million fundraising round, the company is now focused on bringing its high-performance AI inference chip to market later this year. While NVIDIA has a 3-decade headstart, VSORA's founder believes the company can make a dent in that lead by solving one of the most pressing challenges in the AI industry today: the cost of deploying large language models and generative AI at scale.
"OpenAI turned on the light for LLMs and generative AI," said VSORA founder and CEO Khaled Maalej. "And the big issue with generative AI and LLMs is to reduce the cost per query for the inference."
AI Funding News
📇 Company: Orasio
🔍 Description: Develops AI-powered video analysis software to detect, alert, and provide actionable insights for cities, homeland security forces, and businesses.
💻 Website: https://www.orasio.com/
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €16 million
🏦 Investors: Global Founders Capital, Frst Capital, Expeditions Fund
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Florian Fournier, Arnaud Delaunay, Fabio Gennari
🗞️ News: LinkedIn, Sifted
📇 Company: Plakar
🔍 Description: Developer of an open-source backup and restore platform designed for AI and cloud-native workloads, offering deduplication, encryption, and structured data storage.
💻 Website: https://plakar.io
📍 HQ City: Paris
🧗 Round: Pre-Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €2.67 million
🏦 Investors: Seedcamp, HelloWorld, IrregularExpression, Galion.exe, Kima Ventures, OPRTRS; angel investors including Olivier Pomel (Datadog), Solomon Hykes (Docker), and Alexandre Yazdi (Voodoo)
👨💼 Founder: Julien Mangeard
🗞️ News: BusinessWire
📇 Company: Alta Ares
🔍 Description: AI-driven drone detection solution enhancing operational efficiency in military and industrial sectors.
💻 Website: http://altaares.com
📍 HQ City: Romainville
🧗 Round: Seed
💰 Amount Raised: €2 million
🏦 Investors: Kima Ventures, Starburst Accelerator, Better Angle, Expansion Ventures, Samuel Dralet, Apok Invest, Apeiron Venture Capital, Durandal Capital
👨💼👩💼 Founders: Hadrien Canter, Stanislas Walch, Théo Bondarec, Hadrien Bernard, Alain Henry
🗞️ News: FrenchWeb, Maddyness
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, our ecosystem guests, and VCs 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
Google Startup Perks program | We're excited to launch our new Startup Perks program, offering exclusive benefits and discounts from 20+ leading AI and tech companies within the Google Cloud ecosystem. | More information
The Government has launched a call for “Digital transition of culture and the appropriation of artificial intelligence” projects. | As part of the France 2030 initiative, the goal is to support the digital transformation of the cultural and creative industries. This initiative aims to help cultural actors adopt AI while ensuring ethical use and copyright protection. The program encourages collaboration between cultural organizations and tech companies to develop innovative solutions, from data-sharing tools to secure content management. It seeks to enhance the competitiveness of French creative industries and promote a responsible, Europe-focused AI ecosystem. | More information
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
📆 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
📆 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐀𝐈 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 | June 12 | 🚨 Want to 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐀𝐈 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 in front of Europe's sharpest AI minds? 🧠 150 AI founders, CTOs, AI engineers, researchers & VCs. 🚀 On 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟏𝟐, we're turning the lights on at Doctolib’s HQ in Paris, and the brightest GenAI builders will take the stage. | Request to join
📆 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 YOUR HACK| July 4-9 | This is your chance to push boundaries, solve real-world challenges, and create impact at the official hackathon of the RAISE Summit 2025 at one of Paris's most iconic venues: Le Carrousel du Louvre. | Sign Up
📆 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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