Can Paris be the next unicorn haven? Station F, Europe’s largest incubator, thinks so.

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PARIS— Parisian startup incubatorStation Fembodies President Emmanuel Macron’s stated ambition for the country to drive innovation and inspire an overlooked class of business leaders: entrepreneurs.“Entrepreneur is the new France, and it starts here with you,” the French President famouslysaidat the inauguration of Station F.Nestled in a former train station in the 13tharrondissement, on a plaza named after influential computer scientist Alan Turing, Station F welcomed its first unicorn in Hugging Face, a collaborative platform for AI,among other notable alumni.Hugging Face may be the only company in its portfolio to have unlocked that achievement so far, but the wider Station F ecosystem is clearly growing and thriving. Station F currently hosts over 1,000 startups and 600 investment funds, and the companies in its portfolio have raised more thanEUR 1 billion annually since 2021.Founded in 2017 by French tech billionaire and media tycoon Xavier Niel, Station F predates the generative AI boom. Today, however, 70% of its startups are AI-focused. “AI is everywhere,” said Hafssa Maldji, a communications manager for Station F, during an interview withIBM Thinkat the company’s Paris headquarters. “It’s stronger than Web3, and it’s no longer just a vertical.”While touring the impressive and elegant building, it’s hard not to notice the logos of major tech giants: Apple, Google, AWS, Microsoft, Meta. All have reserved spaces and host “office hours” there, alongside Snowflake, the California-founded data platform company. LVMH and L’Oréal are also present—with a beauty tech lab for L’Oréal—along with French universities and even representatives from other countries like India, South Korea and Japan.“Here, you can be a small entrepreneur sitting next to major players, with access to countless resources,” Maldji said. “This is truly one of the only places where community and collaboration are central.”

France is proudly positioning itself as Europe’s leading AI hub. The country is home to Mistral AI, which recently soared to aUSD 14 billion valuationfollowing a Series C round led by Dutch semiconductor company ASML, as well as other startups likeH Company—founded by former DeepMind engineers—andDataiku. Yann LeCunalso recently announcedthat the city will be home to his next venture, Advanced Machine Intelligence.Entrepreneurs Julien Hébrard and Marvin Amuzu incubated their startup, Abstrakt News, at Station F. In an interview withIBM Think,they admitted that the local ecosystem is still a long way off from Silicon Valley in terms of scale. But they said the opportunities are more tangible now for entrepreneurs. Competing with US companies is “obviously” a challenge, said Amuzu, CTO and Cofounder. “Europe doesn’t have the same financing capacity. We also have less flexibility when it comes to employment.”He explained that hiring and downsizing staff is much more difficult in France. At the same time, France’s long tradition of workers’ rights has its advantages: many Station F founders receive unemployment benefits while incubating their startups. “We often joke that the first investor is the French government, thanks to unemployment rights,” Hébrard said.That said, Station F has big ambitions. And because it’s connected to many of France’s heavyweight companies, things tend to move much faster inside the incubator than outside, Station F says.That was the experience of Joel Belafa, former Director of Engineering of Dataiku, one of France’s leading tech companies. In January 2024, Belafa and former med tech executive Nathan Chen co-foundedBiolevate,an AI-native knowledge platform that aims to standardize complex scientific worfklows—with just a staff of two. Since then, Biolevate’s staff has grown to over 50. And the company won one ofSanofi’s largest tenders—thanks in large part to Station F.“That’s the kind of opportunity Station F creates,” saidJoel Belafa, CEO of Biolevate. “And it’s what makes or breaks startups. Here, we have an ecosystem similar to what California has done so successfully in the past. Startups here work together—not against each other.”