🧠 Voice AI has crossed the uncanny valley, turning sound, speech, and music into powerful tools. It’s fun, unsettling, and wildly investable. Welcome to the hottest, weirdest market in AI, where France is making some noise. In this special essay, Chris O'Brien recounts his accidental journey that led to creating an AI band, producing an album, and what it says about the AI voice market in France and around the world.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

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Headlines

🗞️ France Gets a DefenseTech Unicorn. Harmattan AI has become France’s first DefenseTech unicorn after raising $200m in a round led by Dassault Aviation, valuing the startup at $1.4bn. Founded in 2024, the Paris-based company develops AI-powered combat drones and command-and-control platforms, already supplying the French and British armed forces. The deal deepens industrial ties with Dassault, which plans to integrate Harmattan’s embedded AI into future Rafale F5 and UCAS systems. Long shunned by investors, DefenseTech is now firmly back on the French VC map, geopolitics included. | Les Echos, Le Monde Informatique

🗞️ Speaking of defense...France is officially bringing Mistral AI into the defense stack. The Ministry of the Armed Forces awarded the French AI champion a sweeping framework agreement, opening the door for everything from the armed forces to the Atomic Energy Commission and naval research units to use Mistral’s models and software. Crucially, the tech will run on sovereign French infrastructure, with models fine-tuned on defense data to meet operational needs. The deal, overseen by the Ministry’s AI agency AMIAD, builds on a 2025 cooperation agreement and sends a clear message: France wants cutting-edge AI, but on its own terms, under its own control. | Reuters

🗞️ STATION F is turning up the AI volume by locking in a closer, on-campus partnership with OpenAI. With nearly 80% of startups on site now building AI-powered products, Europe’s biggest startup campus is formalizing a relationship that already included workshops, founder chats, and regular visits from OpenAI teams. The shift from occasional drop-ins to a permanent presence means less hype, more shipping, and faster paths from prototype to global scale. It’s another signal that Paris wants a seat at the top table of global AI.

🗞️ Apple Calls Google for Backup. Apple has struck a deal with Google to integrate Gemini into Siri, a tacit admission that it has fallen behind in the AI race. Analysts see the move as a pragmatic catch-up play and a major win for Google, whose models gain privileged access to the iPhone ecosystem and whose valuation has hit a historic $ 4000 Billion as a result. But the partnership lands as European regulators, including France’s competition authorities, sharpen scrutiny of AI assistants, platform power, and non-exclusive deals. Echoing the historic Google Search agreement on iOS, the deal underscores a new AI reality: even Apple must now balance speed, scale, and Europe’s rules. | Le Monde

🗞️ Speaking of the all-powerful Gemini, it appears an AI Shopping War has Begun. Google is turning Gemini into a shopping agent, teaming up with retailers including Carrefour, Sephora, and Zalando to let users search, buy, and contact customer service, all without leaving the app. The move signals a shift toward “agentic commerce,” where AI handles discovery, purchase, and follow-up autonomously. As OpenAI and Google race to own the new point of sale, retailers face a familiar trade-off: more visibility, less control. In the AI era, the checkout may no longer belong to e-commerce sites, but to assistants. | Le Figaro

🗞️ Paris-based aiming for is having a big AI-meets-biology moment. The startup has landed multi-million-euro backing from the Google.org AI for Science Fund and, at the same time, launched Spore.Labs, an AI-native research arm aiming for some of public health’s hardest microbiology challenges. Backed by a fund born in the glow of DeepMind’s AlphaFold Nobel win, Spore.Bio says it’s the only startup selected worldwide to tackle this problem, using a heady mix of photonics and machine learning to deliver near real-time, on-site microbial testing. With €29.9 million raised to date and a hiring spree underway, Spore.Bio is betting that the future of microbiology is very much AI-first. | EU Startups

🗞️ Generative AI: France Leads Europe Even as Overall Funding Slips. French startups raised €7.4bn in 2025, down 5% year-on-year, but generative AI quietly carried the market, according to EY. While growth equity slowed, AI became “systemic,” driving both deal size and value creation across the VC landscape. Globally, the US remains in a league of its own, capturing nearly 90% of generative AI funding. But in Europe, France now leads on large language models, powered by Mistral AI and a growing bench of contenders. | Maddyness

🗞️ CES 2026: AI Is Everywhere and Still Not Quite the Killer Feature. Three years after ChatGPT’s debut, AI is now baked into nearly every device showcased at CES,, from cars to kitchen appliances. Yet despite the buzz, truly game-changing consumer uses remain elusive. Wearable “AI companions” and always-listening badges made a comeback, echoing past flops like the Humane AI Pin, while real progress was mostly seen in live translation tech, now impressively fluid. For now, AI hardware still feels more like a promise than a must-have, even as OpenAI quietly works on cracking the formula with designer Jony Ive. | Les Echos

🗞️ A landmark 560-page study by France’s health agency Anses has linked social media use among 11–17-year-olds to rising mental health risks, including sleep disorders, depression, cyberbullying, and exposure to self-harm content. Drawing on 1,000 scientific studies, the agency urges policymakers to force platforms to redesign algorithms, interfaces,, and default settings to protect minors’ health. Girls are found to be disproportionately affected, particularly on image-heavy platforms. Anses is clear: safeguarding teens should be a platform responsibility, not a parental afterthought. As age verification debates intensify, Meta is urging Australian authorities to rethink its world-first social media ban for under-16s. | Les Echos, France 24

🗞️ France’s Competition Watchdog Puts AI Chatbots Under the Microscope. France's Autorité de la concurrence has launched a self-initiated review into conversational AI agents, from ChatGPT and Gemini to Mistral’s Le Chat and Perplexity, amid fears they could entrench new tech monopolies. While the market still looks competitive on the surface, regulators worry that agent-powered commerce, embedded ads, and platform-style integrations could quietly reshape entire sectors, starting with e-commerce. Partnerships, monetization models, and the risk of self-preferencing by dominant players are all on the table. A public consultation is coming, with a full opinion expected in 2026. In short: France wants to make sure we don’t swap GAFAMs for “GAF-AIs.” | Usine Digitale

🗞️ Nearly 44% of French people now use generative AI tools, placing France 5th globally for adoption, well ahead of the US, according to a new Microsoft study. While Silicon Valley builds the models, it turns out Europeans are among their most enthusiastic users. Even more striking: the UAE tops the global ranking at 64% adoption, underscoring how AI use is becoming a geopolitical marker as much as a technological one. Globally, one in six people now uses generative AI, but in France, the chatbot habit is clearly mainstream. | Les Echos

🎤 Follow Me Down The Voice AI Rabbit Hole

It started as a throwaway joke. I asked ChatGPT to name a fictional indie band. It spiraled into a fully formed AI-generated album, written, voiced, and released in weeks.

With tools like ChatGPT, Eleven Labs, and Suno egging the process on, the line between playful experimentation and real creative output all but vanished. This isn’t “AI slop.” It’s competent, emotional, and good enough that most people can’t tell the difference.

That slippery moment demonstrates why voice AI has become one of the hottest markets in tech. France is developing its own thriving Voice AI ecosystem, highlighted by several notable funding rounds last year.

As music platforms, startups, and investors race ahead, often faster than regulators, artists, or audiences are comfortable with, audio is quietly becoming the new interface and the new battleground. The result is a messy mix of wonder, unease, and explosive economic potential.

ICYMI

🗞️ Europe's AI Reckoning: Caught Between Regulation, Rivalry, and Risk | As 2026 begins, France and the European Union find themselves at the center of a perfect storm, facing diplomatic confrontation with Washington, urgent safety crises, and mounting questions about whether their regulatory approach can survive first contact with geopolitical reality. | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ From Tesla to Paris: UMA's Audacious Bet on European Robotics | A new French startup believes Europe—not Silicon Valley—is the best place to build the robots of tomorrow. | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ Gradium Wants To Make Voice The New Operating System for AI | The Paris startup, spun out of research lab Kyutai, just emerged from stealth with a $60M seed round to become the global foundation layer for real-time voice interactions. | The French Tech Journal

🗞️ How HyprView Is Using Photonics And AI To Bring Cancer Diagnostics Into the Light | Thanks to developments in AI, photonics is stepping out of the lab and into the clinic. HyprView uses light to uncover the invisible biology inside tumors - information microscopes miss entirely - opening the door to faster, smarter, and far more predictive cancer diagnostics. | The French Tech Journal

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