“Then, on the other hand, [the left-wing New Popular Front] They have been so vocal about all the tax measures they want to bring back that it looks like we are going back to the pre-Macron era,” says Varza. He points to a French law from 2012. “les pigeons” (or “suckers”) movementcampaign by angry internet entrepreneurs who opposed Socialist President François Hollande’s plan to dramatically raise taxes on founders.
Maya Noël, CEO of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, worries not only about France’s ability to attract foreign talent, but also about the future government’s attractiveness to foreign investors. In February, Google announced that it would open a novel artificial intelligence center in Paris, where 300 researchers and engineers will work. Three months later, so did Microsoft announced record $4 billion investment in AI infrastructure in France. The goal was AI Research Lab in Paris since 2015. Today, France is attractive to foreign investors, he says. “And we need them.” Neither Google nor Meta responded to WIRED’s request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.
The vote will not remove Macron himself from power — presidential elections are not scheduled before 2027 — but the election result could radically alter France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, and install a prime minister from either a far-right or left-wing coalition. This would throw the government into uncertainty, increasing the risk of impasse. Only three times in the last 60 years has a president been forced to govern with a prime minister from the opposition party, an arrangement known in France as “cohabitation.”
No AI startup has benefited more from the Macron era than Mistral, whose co-founders include Cédric O, Macron’s former digital affairs minister. Mistral has not publicly commented on France’s upcoming election. The closest the company has come to sharing its views is Cédric O’s decision to repost a post on X last week by entrepreneur Gilles Babinet that read, “I hate the far right, but the left’s economic agenda is surreal.” When WIRED asked Mistral about the retweet, the company said O was not a spokesperson and declined to comment.
Babinet, member of the government Artificial Intelligence Commission, says he has already heard his colleagues considering leaving France. “Several developers I know from Senegal and Morocco are already planning their next move,” he says, claiming that people have also approached him asking for support in renewing their visas early in case it becomes more hard under a far-right government.
While other industries have quietly rushed to support the far right as the preferred alternative to the leftist alliance, according to reportsBabinet downplays the threat from the New Popular Front. “It is obvious that they apply very old-fashioned economic principles and therefore do not understand the new economy at all,” he says. However, after talking to members of the New People’s Front, he stated that the far left was a minority in the alliance. “Most of these people are social democrats, and so they know from experience that when François Hollande came to power, he tried to raise taxes on technology, but it failed.”
Already, there is a sense of damage control as the industry tries to assure outsiders that everything will be fine. Babinet points to other moments of political chaos that industries have weathered. “At the end of the day, Brexit wasn’t that much of a nightmare for the UK tech scene,” he says. The UK is still the preferred place to launch a generative AI startup, according to Accel report.
Stanislas Polu, an OpenAI graduate who founded French start-up Dust last year, agrees that the industry has enough momentum to weather any headwinds. “Some of the results may be a bit bleak,” he says, adding that he expects personal finances will suffer. “Navigating an environment with greater variability is always a little more difficult. I guess we hope that more moderate people will run the country. I think that’s all we can count on.”