Yesterday, I attended the inauguration of OpenAI's Paris offices, just months after participating in the Dev Day in San Francisco. This dual experience offers me a unique perspective on the AI ecosystem between France and the United States.

The Paris event was impressive. The presence of Clara Chappaz, Roxanne Varza (Director of Station F), Sarah Friar (OpenAI CFO), Charlie Perreau (Head of Tech/Media/Startups at Les Echos), Laura Modiano (OpenAI Startups), and major players in our ecosystem demonstrates France's central position in the AI revolution. A moment of pride, certainly, but one that also calls for reflection.

France has exceptional assets. Our academic excellence is well-established: our engineering schools and research laboratories are world references in mathematics and AI. Our engineers are courted by the world's largest tech companies. Our political and social stability, coupled with a unique innovation support system (Research Tax Credit, BPI France, French Tech Visa), creates fertile ground for innovation.

However, my recent stay in Silicon Valley made me realize the growing gap. During OpenAI's Dev Day, I was struck by the execution speed, the outsized ambition, and above all, the ability to rapidly transform research into concrete products. The Valley isn't content with theoretical excellence - it executes, fails, starts over, and ultimately succeeds.

This is where my concern grows. French Tech is going through a delicate period: fundraising is becoming scarce, valuations are falling, and yet we often continue to congratulate ourselves, prisoners of a comfortable but dangerous form of insularity.

The warning signs are clear. After years of euphoria where money flowed freely, often distributed without real viability analysis, French Tech faces a harsh reality. Layoffs are multiplying in our flagship scale-ups, fundraising rounds have become an uphill battle, and many startups, bloated with subsidies and public aid, struggle to demonstrate viable business models. This situation isn't just a market correction - it's the bill coming due for years of sometimes blind funding, where growth metrics systematically trumped the pursuit of profitability.

The "Next40" and "French Tech 120", meant to be our standard-bearers, show worrying signs of weakness. Some of these companies, valued yesterday at hundreds of millions of euros, now find themselves in difficulty, unable to raise funds without accepting massive down rounds. Down rounds are multiplying, bridge loans are becoming the norm, and the ecosystem is beginning to realize that valuation isn't an end in itself.

More worryingly, this situation risks having a domino effect on our entire tech ecosystem. Investment funds, burned by disappointing performances, are becoming more selective. BPI France, which has played a major role in financing our ecosystem, might soon have to manage a portfolio of struggling investments. This situation could quickly become systemic, jeopardizing years of efforts to build a robust French tech ecosystem.

The problem runs deeper than it appears. Our innovation support bodies, though numerous, critically lack visionary entrepreneurs at their helm. How can they effectively understand and support startups when they've never experienced the entrepreneurial journey? Our support structures are too often led by administrative profiles, perpetuating a bureaucratic approach to innovation.

Our system also suffers from crippling compartmentalization. On one side, excellent academic research; on the other, a dynamic entrepreneurial world, but the bridges between them remain fragile. We excel at categorizing: researcher or entrepreneur, academic or business, public or private. These labels become straitjackets that limit innovation and creativity.

Our relationship with failure is equally problematic. While Silicon Valley celebrates pivots and learnings from failures, our culture still stigmatizes them. Our educational system, despite its quality, remains anchored in outdated paradigms that value theoretical perfection over experimentation and risk-taking.

And time is running out. Donald Trump's recent re-election to the U.S. presidency, coupled with Elon Musk's growing influence in the political and technological sphere, signals unprecedented acceleration. The United States, already far ahead in the AI race, is preparing to push even harder on the accelerator, freed from ethical or regulatory constraints. This new geopolitical reality risks widening the technological gap between our continents even further, while Europe still debates its regulations.

In this context, Europe, meant to be our strength, has become in many ways a brake on our competitiveness. Entangled in endless bureaucratic processes, paralyzed by the absence of common vision and effective governance, the EU has transformed into a machine for producing regulations sometimes disconnected from ground realities. The AI Act is a perfect example: while we spend months debating theoretical safeguards, the United States and China are advancing by leaps and bounds. This supranational paralysis handicaps us doubly: it slows our initiatives while depriving us of the critical mass needed to compete on a global scale. Europe must urgently shift from a regulator's posture to that of an innovator and accelerator.

It's time for a frank conversation. Our assets are real, but they're not enough. We must:

OpenAI's arrival in Paris is a tremendous opportunity. Let's seize it not as validation of our excellence, but as a challenge to surpass ourselves.

France has everything it needs to become a global AI leader. But this requires a profound transformation in our approach to innovation. Excellence is not enough - it's our ability to reinvent ourselves that will make the difference.