Why France is the new darling of the AI revolution

Globally, everyone knows that funding is down. In fact, global startup investment in 2023 was 38 per cent lower than it had been a year previously. These deep cuts affected all stages, with early-stage funding down more than 40 per cent than 2022, late-stage funding by 37 per cent, and seed funding declining by just over 30 per cent.

Of course, there are always outliers. While most industries experienced a dip in funding last year, it’s not surprising that AI funding rose––global funding to AI startups achieved almost $50 billion last year, an increase of 9 per cent on 2022’s numbers.

France too, was an outlier in a year where money was tight. According to Dealroom, alongside Italy, it was one of only two of the 10 largest tech markets in Europe where funding rose. Last year, a total of $4.7 billion was raised, up from $4.4 billion the year before. 

There are a number of reasons for this, but one key ingredient is government support. At last summer’s VivaTech trade event in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron announced his ambition for France to become a leader in AI, and he also announced €500 million in new funding to create AI “champions”.

Additionally, France is Europe’s leader in AI research with 338 startups, which include social AI platform Hugging Face, data science firm Dataiku, medical and biology research tool OWKIN, and Mistral AI, a generative AI company.

As a result, this is an ecosystem where opportunities are on offer for AL, ML and computer vision talent. If that’s you, then the Silicon Canals Job Board is your destination for your next job.

Discover five roles in artificial intelligence, all across France, below.

AI Sales Specialist, Zendesk, Télétravail

This AI Sales Specialist job is a quota-carrying role, where you will play a pivotal role in achieving Zendesk’s bookings target and driving the sales growth and adoption of cutting-edge AI solutions. Your primary responsibilities will be to be fully accountable for meeting your sales goal, while empowering the sales organisation to excel at selling AI. You’ll also need a proven track record in meeting sales targets, and have a deep understanding of AI technologies. See all the information here.

Generative AI Leader for Startups EMEA, Oracle, France

Oracle is seeking a Generative AI Sales Lead to drive AI for strategic and leading companies in the start-up segment. You will play a critical role in identifying, developing and closing new AI business opportunities with Oracle’s most strategic customers. These companies are changing the world using generative AI to solve complex problems. To be considered, you’ll need five years’ of experience selling AI technology solutions in a startup or at a cloud provider, a solid knowledge of generative AI and AI services, and a track-record of building go-to-market plans and sales motions to win AI customer engagement at scale. Find out more now.

Deep Learning Developer R&D (M/F), Atos, Échirolles

If you have one or more years’ of hands-on deep learning experience and an MS in data science or computer science, then you may be interested in this Deep Learning Engineer role, where you will bring AI expertise in the computer vision data management activities (data generation, data selection, data cleaning and preparation), and keep up to date with the latest in generative AI, perception, and computer vision research. You’ll also design accurate and performant models for a range of standard computer vision tasks, develop training pipelines for production delivery, and apply MLops principles. See what else you’ll require.

Technical Architect (Solution Engineering), Data Cloud, Salesforce, Paris

The Data Cloud Technical Architect will play a pivotal role in developing innovative solutions for Salesforce customers across a variety of industries. You will work closely with various teams to provide deep technical domain expertise during the pre- and post-sale process, collaborate with the broader Data Cloud team to develop use cases, demos, sales plays, and technical thought leadership. And, you will also have a meaningful role in driving the Salesforce product roadmap forward, serving as a key advisor to the product organisation, by sharing innovative ideas and feedback from customers. See more information now.

Machine Learning Engineer (F/H), Novencia, Lyon

If you are passionate about data and want to evolve within a community of data experts, this Machine Learning Engineer role could be a great fit. You’ll collect data, identify and extract significant characteristics, choose appropriate algorithms or ML techniques and develop and train models on prepared data, among other tasks. You will need a mastery of ML techniques and libraries and frameworks including TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, Scikit-Learn, excellent programming skills with Python (and ideally PySpark or Scala), as well as knowledge of databases, query languages (SQL) and data manipulation tools. See the educational requirements.

Find your next European tech role today on the Silicon Canals Job Board