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“And at the other extreme, [the left-wing New Popular Front] “The government is being too vocal about restoring tax measures and it seems like we’re going back to the pre-Macron era,” said Ms. Varza, who is a former French economist at the University of Illinois in 2012. The “Pigeon” (or “Baka”) MovementA campaign by angry internet entrepreneurs against Socialist President Francois Hollande’s plans to dramatically raise taxes on entrepreneurs.
Maya Noël, CEO of France Digital, a trade group for startups, is concerned not just about France’s ability to attract international talent, but also about how attractive the incoming administration will be to foreign investors. In February, Google announced it would open a new AI hub in Paris, home to 300 researchers and engineers. Three months later, Microsoft also Announced France invests a record $4 billion in AI infrastructure. Meta AI Lab She has been based in Paris since 2015. Now, France is attractive to foreign investors, “and we need them,” she says. 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, a member of the government, Artificial Intelligence CommitteeHe says he’s already heard from colleagues considering leaving France: “Several programmers I know from Senegal and Morocco are already planning their next move,” he said, claiming some have even asked him to help them renew their visas early in case it becomes difficult to do so under the far-right government.
While other sectors have quietly moved to support the far right as a preferred alternative to the left-wing coalition, ReportsBabinet downplays the threat posed by the New Popular Front. “It’s clear that they have very old economic rules and have no understanding of the new economics,” he says. But after speaking with New Popular Front members, he says the far-left are a minority within the coalition. “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, 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. According to Accel, the UK remains a good place to launch a generative AI startup. 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.”