“At the other extreme, (the leftist New Popular Front) has been so vocal about all the tax measures it wants to implement that it seems like we’re just going back to the pre-Macron period,” Varza says. He points to the case of France in 2012. The “pigeons” (or “suckers”) movementa campaign by angry Internet entrepreneurs who opposed Socialist President François Hollande’s plan to dramatically increase taxes on founders.
Maya Noël, chief executive of France Digitale, an industry group for startups, is concerned not only about France’s ability to attract foreign talent, but also about how attractive the next government will be to foreign investors. In February, Google said it would open a new artificial intelligence center in Paris, where 300 researchers and engineers would be based. Three months later, Microsoft too Announced a record $4 billion investment in its French AI infrastructure. Meta has had a Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory 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 unseat Macron himself — presidential elections are not scheduled until 2027 — but the election result could dramatically reshape the French parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, and install a prime minister from either the far-right or left-wing coalition. This would plunge the government into uncertainty, increasing the risk of stalemate. In the past 60 years, there have been only three occasions when a president has 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, which counts Cédric O, former digital minister in Macron’s government, among its co-founders. Mistral has made no public comments on the choice France faces at the polls. The closest the company has come to sharing its views was Cédric O’s decision to republish a post by businessman Gilles Babinet last week that said: “I hate the far right, but the left’s economic program 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 committeesays he has already heard his colleagues considering leaving France. “Some of the coders I know from Senegal and Morocco are already planning their next move,” he says, claiming that some people have also approached him to ask for help renewing their visas early in case this becomes more difficult under a far-right government.
While other industries have quietly rushed to support the far right as a preferable alternative to the left-wing alliance, according to reportsBabinet downplays the threat of the New Popular Front. “It is clear that they come with very outdated economic rules and therefore do not understand the new economy at all,” he says. But after speaking with members of the New Popular Front, he says the far left is a minority in the alliance. “Most of these people are social democrats and therefore know from experience that when François Hollande came to power, he tried to raise taxes on technology and failed miserably.”
There is 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 chaos that industries survived. “At the end of the day, Brexit was not a nightmare for the tech scene in the UK,” he says. The UK remains the preferred place to launch a generative AI startup, according to Accel report.
Stanislas Polu, an OpenAI alumnus who launched French AI startup Dust last year, agrees that the industry has enough momentum to survive any obstacles thrown its way. “Some of the outcomes might be a bit bleak,” he says, adding that he expects personal finances to take a hit. “It’s always a bit trickier to navigate a more volatile environment. I guess we hope that more moderate people will govern that country. I think that’s all we can hope for.”