USAArtificial Intelligence▲impact 4
French AI Startups Turn to U.S. Capital as Europe's Funding Gap Widens
France is producing a growing number of high-value artificial intelligence and technology companies, but their success is highlighting Europe's shortage of late-stage capital compared with the U.S., according to Bloomberg. Mistral AI raised €3 billion in Europe's largest technology funding round, quantum computing company Pasqal listed on Nasdaq, and Nvidia agreed to acquire AI platform Hugging Face for about $13 billion. U.S. startups raised $97 billion for generative AI last year, compared with $5.9 billion across Europe, according to EY data cited by Bloomberg, though France attracted more funding than the UK and Germany within Europe. Mistral's latest round valued the Paris-based company at more than €21 billion, nearly double its valuation a year earlier, led by Samsung Electronics with the Scaleup Europe Fund and Boston-based PSG Equity sharing co-lead status. Pasqal chose Nasdaq for its initial listing and plans a later Euronext listing, while Mistral Chief Executive Arthur Mensch has said an eventual IPO could help preserve the company's independence, though its listing venue has yet to be decided.