AI boom makes European universities the new Harvard and Stanford for tech talent – Fortune

The dramatic new-age tale of a college student striking gold on a billion-dollar idea not long after donning their graduation gown has been a very American dream for much of the 21st century.

While Europe lagged behind in the tech boom, the founders of Google, Meta, and Microsoft, still reigning supreme, were starting their journeys out of college dorm rooms at Harvard and Stanford.

However, several exciting European startups are proving they wont get left behind in the AI revolution, as more capital now flows through Paris than anywhere else on the continent.

According to Dealroom data analyzed by venture capital fund Accel, French AI startups are the most well-funded among their European and Israeli peers.

Companies like Mistral, Owkin, and Hugging Face have helped French AI startups amass $2.3 billion worth of capital to drive their burgeoning operations, more than their competitors in other European hubs like the U.K. and Germany.

The data confirms that universities in Paris are the source of Frances newfound tech muscle.

Arthur Mensch, the 31-year-old CEO of AI unicorn Mistral, is perhaps the most exciting face of Frances burgeoning tech sector, overseeing the large language model groups rapid rise to a $6 billion valuation.

But he started like most of his fellow French founders didat a Parisian university.

Some 57% of French founders came from cole Polytechnique, a science- and engineering-focused college based in the south Parisian suburb of Palaiseau.

Mensch was one of them, studying applied mathematics and computer science at the university between 2011 and 2015.

According to Dominique Rossin, cole Polytechniques Provost, only a handful of students who walk through his university doors on day one know what they want to do for a career.

We really push our students out of their comfort zone and encourage them to try new subjects and discover new areas in science. Just as the field of engineering is vast, so too are the students profiles, interests, and predispositions to certain topics, Rossin told Fortune.

Nevertheless, we can say that successful founders often share some traits, which we try to develop here at cole Polytechnique: a good team spirit, strong problem-solving skills, and a lot of perseverance and dynamism.

Students at the university also get access to humanities and social science courses to broaden their outlook, something that appears increasingly vital as AI encroaches on all walks of life.

The Mistral cofounder is also a former Google DeepMind employee. Hes in good company, with 11% of the founders analyzed by Accel starting at Google.

The Pierre et Marie Curie campus at Sorbonne Universit and Tlcom Paris are the other major universities in the capital where todays founders cut their teeth.

cole Normale Suprieure, meanwhile, is where the tech protgs go to grow up. Some 29% of French founders gained work experience at the university, outpacing U.S. colleges Stanford and MIT and AI giants like Google and Facebook. Mistrals Mensch earned his PhD at the university, in Pariss fifth arrondissement, before moving on to Google.

The drive for AI capital is in vogue across Europe. While French startups receive the most funding, the U.K. has the most generative AI startups out of the 221 identified by Dealroom.

It wasnt always the case that Europes universities were the birthplace for founders of multibillion-dollar companies. Entrepreneurs have been wont to call out a cultural mismatch that means innovation rarely starts behind university walls on the east side of the Atlantic.

But things are changing thanks to the AI boom.

Accel partner Harry Nelis has been investing in Europes tech ecosystem for two decades and says the landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

He credits founder factories, in other words, startups creating new startups.

In the very beginning, we would invest in entrepreneurs who would come out of large French companies, and they hadnt done it before.

As a result, they would have to reinvent the wheel a number of times, Nelis says.

Now, Europes mature ecosystem is becoming home to several of these founder factories, the most significant being universities, alongside Metas establishment of its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) hub in Paris in 2015.

Because AI is based on deep tech and foundation models, Nelis says it isnt surprising that 38% of Europes founders held positions in academic institutions.

That is really novel for the AI wave. That was not the situation for the e-commerce wave, for example, or the enterprise software wave; its something that is truly unique for AI, he notes.

cole Polytechniques Rossin agrees, adding the success of his grads provides a unique networking opportunity for current students.

However, there is a looming threat from Frances comparatively chaotic political wing.

President Emmanuel Macron called an election last week that could elevate the countrys far left or far right into power.

The news sent Frances stock market plummeting, allowing Londons exchange to reclaim its crown as the biggest in Europe.

That in itself is unsettling enough without remembering Macrons pro-business stance.

The president has been at the forefront of a Choose France investment drive, which has allowed $16 billion of capital from tech titans like Microsoft and Amazon to flow into the country. A disrupted French political landscape could alter priorities.

Nelis, however, thinks not even a landmark shift to Frances ruling class could stop Frances hard-won AI supremacy.

I think the AI wave will be so powerful in its own right that politics will really not matter much.

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AI boom makes European universities the new Harvard and Stanford for tech talent - Fortune