At the Paris AI Action Summit, the new credo is” Health Third.”

The Main Item

Europe has a reputation for making rules and moving gently, but this week marked a second of capitulation to Silicon Valley’s just upbeat “accelerationist” ethos.

The AI Safety-focused <a href=”https://www.elysee.fr/en/sommet-pour-l-action-sur-l-ia” rel=””>Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris was all about investment and worldwide competition, which was a renowned event in the past. While technology leaders like Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, and Dario Amodei mingled with world leaders and stressed the importance of moving quickly, the event’s annual review was actually pushed into a back room.

The original focus of this seminar was on AI safety, but it has since been moved to making money with AI, according to Bloomberg Beta’s James Cham.

For a fresh federal data center job to jump-start its AI determine needs, France pledged a gigawatt of nuclear energy. Mistral, the banner AI laboratory of France, showed some American-style goes with its latest security agreement with Helsing for “vision-language-action models” that will be useful to military operators.

And French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, a charismatic deal-maker in the Silicon Valley mold, is vying to fight for European AI. He is a major supporter of the burgeoning Paris tech incubator Station F, has pledged to French entrepreneurs, and has announced this week that he will contribute$ 3 billion to infrastructure and the first private, independent AI lab in Europe, based in Paris.

The summit’s non-binding on AI safety at the end of the gathering — limited to generalities about ensuring that” AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and” sustainable for people and the planet” — almost seemed like an afterthought.

A clear statement that even a passing acknowledgement of AI safety issues is unacceptable to the Trump Administration was both refused by the US and the UK. The rest of the world, including China and India, both of which supported the declaration, still wants to at least keep the conversation going.

” There’s been a divergence with the US and UK where these’ commitments ‘ around AI safety are no longer a priority”, Do NotPay’s Joshua Browder told me. ” Before the idea of AI safety was really to control risk, but now it’s about having the best people and the best technology,” said the statement.

In an essay after the summit, Anthropic’s Amodei against pulling away too far from AI safety frameworks.

” Time is short, and we must accelerate our actions to match accelerating AI progress”, he wrote. The capabilities of AI systems could be best described as” a completely new state populated by highly intelligent people emerging on the global stage — a” country of geniuses in a datacenter” with the significant economic, societal, and security implications that would bring.

However, Vice President JD Vance made it clear in his speech on Monday that the US has no time for such worries and that by adopting an America-first mindset, European startups can either follow suit or run the risk of being forgotten by both the US and China. The Trump administration will make sure that American-designed and manufactured chips are used to create the most powerful AI systems in the US, he said.

Without any leading global players save the Netherlands ‘ ASML, Europe certainly trails the US in terms of AI investment, and its tech sector overall is still in its youth.

Venture investment into European AI startups dipped in 2023 to just under$ 12.9 billion, but recovered to$ 16.2 billion in 2024, per PitchBook. That compares with$ 100.9 billion for US AI companies.

A16z shut down its London office at the end of last month, possibly as a sign of the skepticism that some people have that Europe can be a major player in AI.

However, there is no consensus on this: General Catalyst just announced a new “,” which outlined a strategy to invest in more European talent and promote faster AI adoption in major European companies.

The location of offices isn’t always an important indicator, according to UK investor Nathan Benaich. ” I’m not entirely convinced that US businesses need to set up shop in Europe to compete effectively,” he said, noting that the main benefit for European companies seeking US funding is that the funding comes from US-based teams.

A recent , which have sat in the background for several years while US equities have soared, is another encouraging sign for Europe’s tech efforts. A steady upward trend of higher stock prices would result in more investment capital for European companies as they pursue the promise of AI.

However, optimism about a potential end to the conflict in Ukraine was a significant contributor to the recent gains, and the outcome of that conflict and a looming trade war could quickly alter everything. At this dangerous time in history, AI risks are just one of Europe’s safety concerns.

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One Big Chart

Startup exit markets have suffered over the past two years, but data from Carta indicates that the trend will change in the second half of 2024.

Per Carta’s report, startup M&amp, A activity reached its highest level since 2019, with 333 deals in the last half of 2024 and 642 for the year. Investors have been turning to secondary markets for liquidity for their LPs because the IPO market is currently in a deep freeze. However, LPs may be earning more money in the first half of 2025 if this trendline is any indication.

Five Notable Deals

Two legal tech startups raised funding from big name firms this week, one of them as part of General Catalyst’s new roll-up strategy.

• Sequoia Capital led a$ 300 million Series D round, raising Harvey’s legal assistant. Other investors included Kleiner Perkins, GV, Elad Gil, Conviction, OpenAI Startup Fund, Coatue, and LexisNexis, at a$ 3 billion valuation.
• Apptronik, a maker of human-robots, raised$ 350 million in a Series A round led by B Capital and Capital Factory. Google also participated.
• QuEra, a startup focused on quantum computing, raised$ 230 million in a round led by Softbank and Google.
• Another legal tech startup, Eudia, raised a$ 105 million Series A led by General Catalyst with participation from numerous investors and angels including Floodgate, Sierra Ventures, Hakluyt Capital, Gokul Rajaram, Scott Belsky, and others ( we scooped this round in October when it was under a different name, Cicero ). The round includes$ 30 million up front and$ 75 million to come later to fund acquisitions, per General Catalyst’s new roll-up strategy.
• Olipop, the maker of pre-biotic sodas, raised$ 50 million in Series C funding led by J. P. Morgan Private Capital’s Growth Equity Partners at a$ 1.85 billion valuation.

Stories We’re Reading

• Elon Musk’s bid to buy OpenAI for$ 97.4 billion, along with investors including Valor Equity Partners, 8VC, and Ari Emanuel, threw a spanner in Sam Altman’s complicated effort to spin the AI juggernaut out from the non-profit that controls it. Altman jokedly on X that OpenAI would instead offer to buy X for$ 9.74 billion, and on Tuesday told Axios that” OpenA I is not for sale,” but Musk’s gambit is at best a thorny issue for him. Musk accuses Altman of abdicating his original purpose and doubled down on this point on Thursday morning, saying he would reject the offer if OpenAI is still in the hands of the nonprofit.
• Anthropic’s latest Claude model could be arriving in the next few months, The Information reports, and will combine its traditional LLM with new “reasoning” capabilities into one product for customers. If this structure seems familiar, that’s because OpenAI’s Altman tweeted out that OpenAI’s plan for its long-rumored GPT-5 release will be structured in the same way— as an integrated product with its o3 reasoning model. ” In both ChatGPT and our API, we will release GPT-5 as a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including o3. We will no longer ship o3 as a standalone model”.
• Outside of Musk’s DOGE, more tech leaders from a16z are poised to become key leaders of Trump’s administrative state. The latest addition: Brian Quintenz, the firm’s head of policy in its crypto practice, is Trump’s latest pick to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Prior to Trump’s first term, Quintenz served as a Republican commissioner for the CFTC. According to The Information, growth investor Jamie Sullivan is advising DOGE alongside Marc Andreessen, and members of the firm’s talent team are assisting the administration in hiring government employees. Meanwhile, Business Insider obtained a list of 30 DOGE staffers, including previously unreported ones with ties to Musk’s companies like investor Adam Ramada.
• Canadian AI leader Cohere is suing copyright infringement by news publications including The Atlantic and the LA Times, alleging that the company’s LLM regularly delivers full articles and also hallucinates in their name. Ten other publishers are included in the News Media Alliance’s lawsuit, which was filed a few days after a federal judge upheld Thomson Reuters ‘ favor in a similar-type case, which was publishers ‘ first significant victory. Litigation including the New York Times versus OpenAI, and News Corp. versus Perplexity, is ongoing.

The Newcomer Podcast

Eric and Madeline unpack the biggest “deal that wasn’t” story of Elon Musk’s unsolicited offer to purchase OpenAI for$ 97.4 billion. This is more of a statement about Musk’s frustration with OpenAI’s continued transformation into a for-profit company because Sam Altman has torn down the offer on X. Pressures have been mounting on engineers to look for greener pastures, though, if Thrive Capital’s Joshua Kushner’s urging speech for talent to stay put is any indication.

The megafirm showed stronger returns on earlier investments ahead of its next big capital raise when Eric’s reporting on Lightspeed Venture Partners ‘ new fundraising documents is then turned to. Additionally, they explain the AI Action Summit’s 180-degree transition from a forum for AI safety to a conference dominated by CEOs and accelerationist world leaders. They close with a breakdown with a who’s who on the cap table of legal-tech Harvey’s latest Series D, and Mercury’s rumored new Sequoia-backed fundraise.

Chapters

• 01: 45 — Elon Musk’s Boisterous OpenAI Bid

• 10: 29 — A Look at Lightspeed Venture Partners ‘ Fund Returns

• 13: 07 — Europe’s Big AI Push At the AI Action Summit

• 16: 59 — Harvey and Mercury Raise Fresh Funding

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