Paris named as Europe’s leading tech ecosystem, beating London

By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Paris has been named as the new European tech champion, beating London for the first time on some metrics, according to data from Dealroom, which collects information on startups and venture capital firms.

Between 2017 and 2024, the combined enterprise value of Paris startups increased 5.3 times, compared with 4.2 times for London, Dealroom said, after assessing dozens of metrics that contribute to a successful tech ecosystem.

Although London attracted bigger funding rounds, the actual valuations of the companies have not increased dramatically, while the funding rounds secured by Paris-based companies have had a bigger impact on valuations, it said. 

French tech companies, including Mistral AI and Poolside, raised $7.8 billion last year, less than London’s $11.3 billion.

Europe has been falling behind other regions in tech innovations, with only some countries trying to boost tech investments.

While the market capitalisation of global tech, media and telecom companies rose from $7 trillion in 2000 to $34 trillion last year, Europe's share dropped from 30% to just 7%, a McKinsey report said on Wednesday.

If Europe had maintained its share, it would have generated an additional $8 trillion in market value, it said.

Paris is also the only European city on Dealroom's top five global champions list, which is dominated by U.S. cities.

It comes a month ahead of Paris hosting one of the largest global tech conferences, VivaTech, featuring top executives from companies such as Nvidia, Alibaba, Meta, OpenAI, Mistral, Anthropic and Cohere. Last year's conference was attended by more than 165,000 people.

"It's not just about the competitiveness of Paris on the AI scene today, it's also about what will happen next and how we can keep on attracting the talent, investment, and the tech activities," Francois Bitouzet, managing director of VivaTech, told Reuters.

Since coming to power in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has talked about wanting France to be a world leader in AI and 'deep-tech', inviting several firms to invest in the country and pushing for creation of startup incubator Station F.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm. Editing by Mark Potter)