“And at the other extreme,[the left-wing New Popular Front]is so vocal about all the tax measures they want to bring back, it seems like we’re going back to the pre-Macron era,” says Varza, who points to France’s 2012 “Les Pigeons” (or “The Suckers”) movement, a movement of angry internet entrepreneurs who opposed Socialist President François Hollande’s plans to dramatically raise taxes on entrepreneurs.
Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, a trade group for startups, is concerned not just about France’s ability to attract foreign talent, but also about how attractive the incoming administration will be to foreign investors. In February, Google said it would open a new AI hub in Paris, home to 300 researchers and engineers. Three months later, Microsoft said it would also invest a record $4 billion in French AI infrastructure. Meta has had an AI lab in Paris since 2015. Now, she says, France is attractive to foreign investors. “And we need them.” Neither Google nor Meta responded to WIRED’s requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.
The vote is unlikely to force Macron out of office — presidential elections aren’t scheduled until 2027 — but it could dramatically reshuffle France’s lower house of parliament and National Assembly, potentially giving the prime minister a far-right or far-left coalition. That would create uncertainty and increase the risk of gridlock. Only three times in the past 60 years has a president been forced to govern with an opposition prime minister — an arrangement known in France as “coexistence.”
No AI startup has benefited more from Macron’s administration than Mistral, whose co-founder was former digital minister Cédric Au. Mistral has not publicly commented on the electoral choices facing France. The closest the company has come to expressing a position was last week, when Cédric Au reposted a post on X by entrepreneur Gilles Babinet, who wrote, “I hate the far right, but the economic policies of the left are unrealistic.” When WIRED asked Mistral about the retweet, the company said Au was not a spokesman and declined to comment.
Babinet, who sits on the government’s artificial intelligence committee, said he has already heard from colleagues considering leaving France. “Several programmers I know from Senegal and Morocco are already planning their next move,” he said, claiming that some have asked for help renewing their visas early in case they become more difficult to renew under the far-right government.
While other sectors have reportedly quietly moved to support the far-right as a preferred alternative to the left-wing coalition, Babinet downplays the threat posed by the New Popular Front. “It’s clear that they have very old economic rules and therefore no understanding of the new economy,” he says. But after speaking with members of the New Popular Front, he says the far-left are a minority within the coalition. “Most of these people are social democrats, so they know from experience that when François Hollande came to power, he tried to raise taxes on technology and it failed miserably.”
There’s already a sense of damage control as the industry tries to reassure outsiders that everything will be fine. Babinet points to other moments of political turmoil the industry has survived. “In the end, Brexit wasn’t such a nightmare for the UK tech industry,” he says. The UK remains a good place to launch a generative AI startup, according to the Accel report.
Stanislas Pol, an OpenAI alumnus who launched French AI startup Dust last year, agreed that the industry has the momentum to weather any headwinds. “Some of the results may be a bit bleak,” Pol said, adding that he expects personal finances to take a hit. “It’s always a bit complicated to navigate an unstable environment. I guess we’re hoping that more moderate people will govern the country. I think that’s all we can hope for.”
