Is France behind in AI?

In 2025, private investment in AI reached $4.4 billion in France, according to Quid data reported in Stanford's AI Index: 4th in the world, 2nd in Europe behind the United Kingdom, 1st in the EU ahead of Germany. Per capita, that comes to about $63 per French resident, against $47 per German resident, by our calculation. 84 French AI companies received funding for the first time in 2025, against 92 in Germany and 172 in the United Kingdom. Over 2013-2025, France remains behind the United Kingdom and Germany. These figures do not include the €109 billion announced at the February 2025 summit, which are multi-year commitments, mostly for data centres.

For models, our count from the Epoch AI database gives 51 notable models to which at least one organisation based in France has contributed since 2003, against 84 in the United Kingdom and 29 in Germany. Meta's Paris laboratory, Facebook AI Research, took part in 34 of them and Mistral AI in 7, all published since 2023. In 2024, France published 4, all from Mistral AI, more than any other European country. The count is low across Europe: 1 French model in 2025, against 65 American and 36 Chinese. Our analysis on French AI shows that the nationality of the provider says nothing about the footprint of an answer.

In the TOP500 supercomputer ranking of June 2026, France has 21 machines, 2nd in Europe by number behind Germany (41). By cumulative power, 317 PFlop/s, it is 6th in Europe, behind Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Finland, by our count. Its most powerful machine, at the CEA, is 29th in the world; Jean Zay, the public AI research machine, is 49th for its part equipped with H100 cards. Germany has the world's 5th machine, JUPITER, at Jülich, and the United Kingdom the 13th, Isambard-AI. Alice Recoque, the exascale machine ordered by EuroHPC for the CEA, is being installed and is due to open in 2027.

Supercomputers are only part of computing: large models are mostly trained in companies' data centres, for which no open source gives the power by country. France has an asset for hosting them, one of the least carbon-intensive electricity supplies in Europe and a net export balance of 92 TWh in 2025, but projects have already reserved nearly 18 GW of grid connection; our analysis on electricity gives the orders of magnitude, and our viewpoint the conditions.

French businesses use AI less than the EU average: 18% of those with 10 or more employees in 2025, against 20% in the EU and 26% in Germany, ranking 15th out of 27. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands exceed 33%. Residents, on the other hand, are above the average: 37% of those aged 16-74 have used generative AI in the last 3 months, against 33% in the EU and 32% in Germany, ranking 16th. Eurostat surveys people aged 16-74 on the last 3 months; Arcep's Baromètre du numérique, which surveys people aged 12 and over on their use in 2025, finds 48%. Our analysis on French users breaks this use down by age, qualification and occupation.