French Tech and AI: the French startups to know in 2026

Everyone has heard of Mistral. Behind it, there’s a wave of French AI startups and labs publishing open-source models, selling tools you can try tonight, and hiring interns. We picked 13, checking for each one who founded it, when, and its latest published funding round. And for each, the reason a student should know about it.

In short: French Tech is both a government label and a network, run by the Mission French Tech out of Station F in Paris. In 2026, French AI means Mistral AI first (€3 billion raised in September), but also H Company, Kyutai, Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs, Photoroom, Dust, and a strong health and biology cluster with Owkin, Bioptimus and Aqemia. It’s also a year of acquisitions: Hugging Face by Nvidia, Gladia by OVH Groupe. For you, these companies mean tools to try, open models to study, and internships to aim for.

What exactly is French Tech?

Three pieces to tell apart.

• The label and the Mission French Tech. French Tech was launched on November 27, 2013 by then digital minister Fleur Pellerin. The Mission French Tech is a government agency that supports the startup ecosystem; it is based at Station F.
• The French Tech Next40/120 program. It’s the annual selection of scale-ups the French state supports closely. For the 2026 cohort, half of the French Tech 120 is picked on growth (at least €20 million in revenue and 15% average annual growth over three years), the other half on the amounts raised between January 2022 and April 2026. On the AI side, Mistral AI, H Company and Aqemia made the Next40.
• Station F. Opened in June 2017 by telecom billionaire Xavier Niel in a former rail depot, the Halle Freyssinet in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, the campus covers 34,000 m². According to Station F, more than 1,000 startups work there and it runs over 30 programs, including F/ai, dedicated to AI.

2026: billions, and buyouts

It has been a busy year. Mistral AI raised €3 billion in September. AMI Labs, Yann LeCun’s startup, closed a $1.03 billion round in March. And two standouts found buyers: on September 3, Nvidia confirmed it will acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, and at the end of July Gladia announced it would join OVH Groupe. We keep both on the list: the teams and the tools are still there.

The 13 startups and labs to know

Selection criteria: real activity in 2026, verifiable facts (founders, date, funding), and concrete value for a student. When we couldn’t find a more recent round, we say so.

1. Mistral AI: language models made in France

Mistral builds language models, some of them open-weight, and sells them to businesses. It was founded on April 28, 2023, by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix (Wikipedia). Latest round: €3 billion on September 8, 2026, at a valuation above €21 billion. For you: its consumer assistant, Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat), has a student plan at $5.99 a month, and the company now has more than 1,000 employees (Maddyness).

2. H Company: agents that use a computer the way you do

H builds AI agents that can operate software like a human: clicking, filling in forms, navigating. Founded in Paris in 2023 by Charles Kantor, Laurent Sifre and three DeepMind veterans (Daan Wierstra, Karl Tuyls, Julien Perolat), it saw those three leave as early as August 2024; Gautier Cloix has been CEO since June 2025 (Wikipedia). Latest published round: a record $220 million seed in May 2024. For you: H offers HoloTab, a free Chrome extension to try its agents, and its Holo models are a good case study if agents interest you.

3. Kyutai: the open-science lab, non-profit

Not a startup: a non-profit research lab announced on November 17, 2023, funded by Iliad, CMA CGM and Schmidt Sciences, and led by Patrick Pérez. So no funding rounds, just donations. Its releases: Moshi, a real-time voice AI (2024), Hibiki for spoken translation (2025), Unmute, then Pocket TTS, a text-to-speech model that runs on an ordinary CPU (January 2026). For you: everything is published as open source, and the team includes research interns and PhD students.

4. AMI Labs: Yann LeCun’s “world models”

After leaving Meta at the end of 2025, Yann LeCun founded Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, where he is executive chair, with Alexandre LeBrun as CEO (Wikipedia). Headquartered in Paris, with offices in New York, Montreal and Singapore. Latest round: $1.03 billion in March 2026, at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. For you: it’s a research lab that doesn’t expect a product for about five years; it mostly matters for research master’s and PhD profiles.

5. Hugging Face: the platform for open models

Founded in New York in 2016 by three French entrepreneurs, Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf (Wikipedia), Hugging Face hosts more than 3 million models and 500,000 datasets. Latest round: $235 million in August 2023, at a $4.5 billion valuation. Since then, Nvidia has confirmed its $12.9 billion acquisition; Clément Delangue stays in charge and the platform is meant to remain open, according to TechCrunch. For you: the Hugging Face Learn online courses (LLMs, agents, robotics, audio) are an excellent way in.

6. Photoroom: AI image editing

The app cuts out objects and generates backgrounds and product shots. Founded in Paris in 2020 by Matthieu Rouif and Eliot Andres, it reported more than 150 million downloads and about 5 billion images processed a year in early 2024. Latest published round: $43 million in February 2024, led by Balderton, at a $500 million valuation. For you: a direct tool for design or marketing projects, and its careers page mentions internships.

7. Dust: AI agents for teams

Dust lets companies build AI agents plugged into a team’s tools (Slack, Notion, Google Drive, GitHub…), choosing the model from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Mistral. It was founded in 2023 by Gabriel Hubert and Stanislas Polu, a former OpenAI researcher, both ex-Stripe (TechCrunch). Funding: $5.5 million in 2023, then $16 million in June 2024, both led by Sequoia; its website also features an Axios story reporting a $40 million raise in May 2026. For you: a window into how companies actually deploy agents, and the company is hiring.

8. Gladia: speech-to-text

Gladia provides a speech recognition API. Founded in 2022 by Jean-Louis Quéguiner, it says it serves more than 300,000 developers and 2,000 business customers. Latest step: its acquisition by OVH Groupe, announced on July 31, 2026, subject to regulatory approval, for an undisclosed amount. For you: a useful case study if you’re building a voice project, and a sign that French players are consolidating their own tech stack.

9. LightOn: enterprise generative AI, on the stock market

Founded in Paris in 2016 by Igor Carron, Laurent Daudet, Florent Krzakala and Sylvain Gigan, LightOn makes Paradigm, a generative AI platform for businesses (Wikipédia). Latest transaction: its listing on Euronext Growth Paris in November 2024, presented as a first for a European generative AI startup. For you: it co-developed ModernBERT with Answer.AI, an open model downloaded more than 10 million times in three months, handy for natural language processing projects.

10. FlexAI: simpler access to compute

Founded in October 2023 by Brijesh Tripathi, who worked at Nvidia, Apple, Tesla and Intel, and Dali Kilani (TechCrunch). Latest published round: a €28.5 million seed in April 2024. In 2026, its offer gives access to more than 20 open models through a single API key, billed by usage. For you: convenient for comparing open models in a dev project without running a server.

11. Owkin: AI for biomedical research

Founded in 2016 by Thomas Clozel, a medical doctor, and Gilles Wainrib, an AI researcher (Wikipedia), Owkin analyzes biomedical data to help find treatments and design better clinical trials. Latest verified public round: $180 million from Sanofi in November 2021, which made it a unicorn. It launched K Pro, a research agent, in May 2025. For you: an outlet for biology, health or data profiles who want to do research, not patient care.

12. Bioptimus: foundation models for biology

Founded in Paris in 2024, with Jean-Philippe Vert (former head of R&D at Owkin) as CEO and Rodolphe Jenatton (ex-Amazon and Google) as CTO (TechCrunch). Latest published round: $41 million in January 2025, led by Cathay Innovation, for $76 million in total. For you: its H-Optimus-0 pathology model is open source, and its models underpin a lot of bioinformatics work.

13. Aqemia: drug discovery

Founded in 2019 by Maximilien Levesque and Emmanuelle Rolland-Martiano, Aqemia combines physics-inspired algorithms with generative AI to design molecules, mainly in oncology (TechCrunch). Latest published round: $38 million in December 2024, led by Cathay Innovation, for more than $100 million in total. It is in the 2026 Next40. For you: a way in for chemists, physicists and computational biologists.

The summary

Name	Field	Founded	Latest verified funding	For you
Mistral AI	language models	2023	€3bn (Sept 2026)	tool, jobs
H Company	agents	2023	$220M (May 2024)	tool, jobs
Kyutai	non-profit lab	2023	donations, no rounds	open source, internships
AMI Labs	world models	2025	$1.03bn (March 2026)	research
Hugging Face	open platform	2016	Nvidia acquisition (2026)	courses, tools
Photoroom	images	2020	$43M (Feb 2024)	tool, internships
Dust	enterprise agents	2023	$40M per Axios (May 2026)	jobs
Gladia	voice	2022	OVH Groupe acquisition (2026)	API
LightOn	enterprise AI	2016	stock listing (Nov 2024)	open models
FlexAI	compute	2023	€28.5M (April 2024)	tool
Owkin	biomedical	2016	$180M (2021)	jobs
Bioptimus	biology	2024	$41M (Jan 2025)	open model
Aqemia	drug discovery	2019	$38M (Dec 2024)	jobs

How to approach them as a student

• Start with their tools. Try Mistral Vibe, HoloTab or Photoroom, run a Kyutai or Bioptimus model, take a Hugging Face course. You’ll walk into interviews with something concrete to talk about.
• Contribute before you apply. A well-documented issue or a small contribution to an open-source repo is often worth more than a generic cover letter.
• Go straight to the careers pages. Photoroom, Dust and Kyutai list their openings, internships included. When preparing your application, use AI as a coach that reviews and questions you, not as a ghostwriter.
• Keep a cool head. A valuation is not a guarantee: H lost three co-founders within months, and two companies on this list are changing hands. Find out about the team you would actually join.

FAQ

What is the biggest French AI startup in 2026?

Mistral AI, valued at more than €21 billion after the €3 billion round announced on September 8, 2026. It is the largest round ever raised by a European tech company.

Is Hugging Face a French company?

Its three founders are French, but it was incorporated in New York in 2016. In September 2026, Nvidia confirmed it will acquire it for $12.9 billion, according to TechCrunch.

What is the Next40?

It’s the top tier of the French Tech Next40/120 program, which selects France’s most advanced scale-ups every year. In 2026, Mistral AI, H Company and Aqemia are in it on the AI side.

Do you need an AI master’s to intern at these startups?

No. They also hire in product, design, marketing, operations or biology. What matters: showing that you’ve used their tools and that you learn fast.

Further reading

• France in the AI race: Mistral, TotalEnergies, nuclear power and data centers, our analysis.
• Little-known French AI tools: more gems to try.
• Landing an internship or apprenticeship with AI: the method, step by step.
• The lettre-stage skill: structure an internship cover letter tailored to a specific startup.