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French AI Startups Felt Unstoppable. Then Came the Election

With polls suggesting voters are about to swing toward the far right or hard left, the AI industry is starting to freak out.

Yet when Macron called a shock snap election earlier this month, the AI industry quickly began to fear that the progress of the past seven years could be lost thanks to campaign pledges that could have a knock-on effect on their talent pipeline, and turbocharge taxes. On Sunday, French voters will cast their ballots in the first-round voting, which polls suggest pits an anti-immigration far right against a coalition including an anti-capitalist hard left, as Macron’s centrist alliance struggles to regain ground in third place. “With the two options that are leading in the polls, we could take a real step back, which is quite scary and quite disheartening,” says Roxanne Varza, director of the Parisian startup campus Station F, launched by the billionaire and Macron ally Xavier Niel.

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