* France ranks 6th in the ranking of the CET Index. This ranking is consistent with other benchmarks: **•** **Stanford AI Vibrancy Index. ** In this index, France ranks 4 ^th in 2023 behind the US, China and the UK (when focusing on R&D, Education, Economy and Infrastructure dimensions). ³ **•** **2024 Global AI Index. ** France ranks 5 ^th in this index, behind the US, China, the UK and Singapore, rising quite dramatically from a 10 ^th position back in 2021. ⁴ 2 World Bank,” Global Innovation Index”, accessed April 2025, Dataset Detail | Prosperity Data360 | Prosperity Data360 3 Stanford University HAI, “Which countries are leading in AI?”, accessed April 2025, Which countries are leading in AI? | Stanford HAI 4 Tortoise Media, “The Global AI Index”, accessed April 2025, The Global AI Index **3** Critical and Emerging Technologies Index 2025: France Report France’s AI success is based on 5 main pillars: **•** **A vibrant ecosystem of startups** , spearheaded by startups such as Mistral AI (€6Bn valuation), Hugging Face (€4.3M billion valuation), Dataiku (€3.5 Billion valuation). French AI startups raised 1.9 Bn in 2024. ⁵ Nevertheless, in the Generative AI race, France (and more generally Europe) mainly rely on one unique player: Mistral AI. ⁶ **•** **Top-tier academic talent** . France is consistently identified as a top-3 nation in terms of AI education, alongside the US and the UK, in the Staford HAI AI Index. ⁷ The country has identified 9 AI research “clusters”, supported by 360 million of funding. Every year, more than 40,000 students specialize in AI, with an objective to raise this number to 100,000 per year. ⁸ World-class talent being key, France is also proactively attracting international talents through the French Tech Visa and a dedicated “Choose France for Research” team, to help the most talented researchers to settle in France. ⁹ **•** **Abundant, low-carbon energy supply** . With AI’s energy demands rapidly rising, France’s energy mix offers a strategic advantage, with an electricity mix composed of more than 70% of nuclear energy and being 95% decarbonized. In 2024, the country recorded a **net electricity export surplus of** **\+89 TWh** , boosting its position as an energy-secure AI hub. ¹⁰ In a recent analysis, CSIS notes that “France aims to leverage surplus nuclear power to attract data centers and support AI research cen \- ters across the country.” ¹¹ **•** **A strong public support** . A first national AI strategy had been established in 2017, already putting France in the race. Since then, 2,5 billion € of public funding has been channeled towards AI, as part of the France 2030 investment roadmap.

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