🧠 An AI founder is betting the future of media isn’t video or podcasts, but books. Using “chained agents,” it turns raw ideas into full manuscripts in hours. But can algorithmic authorship truly replicate voice, craft, and credibility? Thomas A.Q.T. Truong explains the technology and the vision behind Infinite Library.
🧠 I take the plunge and use Infinite Library to write a book, or at least a chapter: "The Age of Inevitability: A Silicon Valley Tale." Read Chapter I here.
Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand
Headlines
🇮🇳🇫🇷 France is heading to the India AI Summit, led by President and Head Cheerleader Emmanuel Macron. The president arrived yesterday aboard the Mac Jet and was greeted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Macron is leaning hard into India, praising a “remarkable acceleration” in ties with Modi as both leaders eye a world that looks increasingly fragmented and increasingly dominated by big powers they’d rather not depend on. The headline act of his three-day visit is a potential €30 billion “contract of the century” for 114 additional Rafale fighter jets, most of them slated for production in India, bringing the total to 62 already ordered. France wants to position itself as New Delhi’s preferred alternative as India trims its reliance on Russian arms and hedges against US and Chinese pressure. | France 24, Euractiv
🇮🇳🇫🇷 It wouldn't be an international summit without a Business France caravan. To help launch the 2026 India-France Year of Innovation, Business France is leading a 110-company business delegation and the largest international pavilion at the India AI Impact Summit. Led by Business France and backed by the French Embassy and La Mission French Tech, the five-day roadshow across Bangalore, Mumbai, and New Delhi is designed to fast-track industrial partnerships, joint R&D, and AI-driven deals. The 436 m² French Pavilion will be home to 29 companies and Big Ole Corporations like TotalEnergies, Capgemini, Schneider Electric, and CMA CGM. With 1,100 French companies already operating in India and the local AI market growing north of 30% annually, Paris clearly sees Delhi as a growth engine. | Business France
🇮🇳🇫🇷 Meanwhile, Digital and AI Minister Anne Le Hénanff will lead a delegation through Bangalore and New Delhi, blending ecosystem meet-ups with a diplomatic push for what Paris calls a “third way” between US and Chinese tech dominance. Three French-backed sequences anchor the agenda: low-carbon “sustainable AI,” AI in service of the general interest (with a strong focus on multilingual models), and a headline side event on protecting children online in the age of conversational agents. The child-protection push, tied to France’s G7 digital presidency, comes with an announcement designed to elevate the issue internationally.
🗞️ Mistral AI has made its first acquisition. The French AI champion is buying the Paris-based serverless cloud startup Koyeb, signaling that it wants to control not just the models but also the machinery that runs them. The move strengthens Mistral’s “compute” offering for enterprise clients, integrating Koyeb’s serverless platform, which lets companies deploy AI applications without wrestling with infrastructure. Translation: fewer hyperscalers, more in-house muscle. Koyeb, founded by former Scaleway engineers and used by around 50,000 developers, brings expertise in GPU workloads, inference, and autoscaling. That's exactly the kind of plumbing needed for production-grade AI. The entire 13-person team is joining Mistral, and the platform will gradually become a core part of Mistral Compute. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. But after investing heavily in data centers and Nvidia chips, Mistral is now stitching together the full stack, from algorithm to execution, to pursue its vision of a truly European AI cloud. | Les Echos, Koyeb, FrenchWeb
🗞️ TECH500 2026: AI Leads the Hiring Boom as French Tech Reindustrializes. The latest TECH500 ranking shows where real momentum lies: AI and industry. Topping the charts, Mistral AI added 417 jobs in a year, confirming AI’s shift from experiment to economic engine. Industrial and energy players like Battri are also surging, signaling a broader reindustrialization push. Funding may be tighter, but French tech’s growth is getting more tangible. Fewer buzzwords, more factories. And lucky you, dear reader: Team FTJ has broken that down into a beautiful, easy-to-read table. For sho'. Check it out here | Read our story here
🗞️ Doctrine is planting its flag in Spain, snapping up Madrid-based Maite.ai in what it calls the largest acquisition in its history. The French “Google of law” now counts 27,000 clients across five countries, adding Spain’s 2,000-strong Maite.ai customer base to its growing European footprint. It’s the company’s fifth acquisition in three years, part of an aggressive post-Summit Partners playbook to become Europe’s sovereign leader in legal AI. Maite.ai will keep its brand and team, but Doctrine gets what it really wants: deeper local roots in Europe’s third-largest legal market. The strategy is to organize and verticalize local legal data country by country, then scale fast before global rivals do. | Maddyness
🗞️ Europe’s AI infrastructure arms race is heating up. Nebius, the Amsterdam-based neocloud player with big-ticket U.S. hyperscaler deals, is planning a 240-megawatt data center in northern France, one of the largest in Europe. It's the redevelopment of a former Bridgestone plant near Lille. The price tag hasn’t been disclosed, but industry estimates suggest a multibillion-dollar build, as European companies ramp up AI adoption and demand serious compute muscle. Meanwhile, at the World AI Cannes Festival, France’s Policloud pitched a very different vision: smaller, distributed, sovereign micro–data centers designed to run AI workloads closer to home. The company has already deployed eight installations across Europe, the Gulf, and the U.S., and is targeting 100 units by 2026 and 1,000 by 2030. The data centers will be powered by renewable-friendly, modular infrastructure. | Reuters, Policloud
🗞️ Retail Meets Its AI Co-Pilot. From March 10–12, One to One Retail E-commerce Monaco celebrates its 15th edition by diving headfirst into the AI-powered retail revolution. This year’s theme is the new three-way relationship: brand, customer, and AI agent. With 1,150 decision-makers, 200 solution providers, and 20 AI-focused startups, the Monaco gathering promises high-speed matchmaking (85% of meetings reportedly lead to deals) and a crash course in how AI is reshaping search, recommendation, and checkout. Executives from Cdiscount, Kingfisher, and Zalando will share how algorithms are reorganising both customer journeys and internal teams. | Maddyness
🗞️ Hugging Face Banks the Big Tech Bucks And Tells Nvidia “Non Merci." Open-source darling Hugging Face is quietly doing what many AI startups only dream of: signing heavyweight clients while keeping its independence, even turning down cash from Nvidia. The Franco-American AI platform, reportedly nearing $100 million in revenue, has landed deals with Apple, Salesforce, and, most recently, Anthropic, the maker of Claude. Frugal, profitable (maybe), and selective about its backers, Hugging Face is showing that open source can pay off.| Les Echos
🗞️ Crypto Crime Wave Hits New High. Armed Gang Mistakes Addresses in Botched Binance France Heist. Three young suspects were arrested in Lyon after allegedly attempting to kidnap and rob the head of Binance France, but managed to target the wrong families. Armed and hooded, the group reportedly stormed apartments near Paris hunting for a crypto executive, only to realize mid-assault that “the address wasn’t right.” The failed raid is the latest episode in France’s escalating crypto crime saga, following high-profile kidnappings like that of David Balland, cofounder of Ledger. | Les Echos
ICYMI
🗞️ 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
🧠 The Infinite Library: One Man's Quest To Let AI Help Anyone Write a Book
Thomas A.Q.T. Truong has a theory about the next big thing in media. It's not podcasts. It's not short-form video. It's books.
"We have WordPress, then we have YouTube videos, then we have social media posts, images," the Paris-based founder says. "The next evolution, I think, is going to be books. It allows everyone to create a legacy."
That conviction sits at the heart of Infinite Library, Truong's AI-powered publishing platform that promises to take anyone from a raw idea to a 100,000-word manuscript in an afternoon. The startup, now raising a €500,000 pre-seed round, is part ghost writer, part vanity press, part Amazon rival, and one of the more intriguing bets on where the collision of AI and the written word is headed.
Even if Infinite Library can do what it promises, a thicket of harder questions surrounds the whole enterprise. Many of these are ones that, as someone who writes, researches, thinks, and creates for a living, I think about a lot: How are these new generation of AI tools re-shaping our world?
On a recent morning, I sat down with Truong at the Petit Palais art museum to hear his pitch and get a demo.
🧠 The Age of Inevitability: A Silicon Valley Tale
Chapter I: The Tribes of the Future Gather
From the upstairs landing, behind glass so clean it was more concept than surface, Graham Whitaker watched the future arrive in quiet, expensive vehicles.
They glided beneath the redwoods on nearly silent motors, all matte finishes and soft glows, the occasional chrome accent catching the last streaks of sunset. The driveway curved twice before widening into a forecourt of pale stone, kept rinsed and spotless by a plumbing system more complex than some municipal grids. Inside the house, the air already carried the light chill of overconfident climate control, the faint clink of glassware, the fugue of money rehearsing its lines. This was the Atherton estate the press liked to call a compound, and tonight it had a purpose: Omniscience Systems was unveiling Model Seven, OMNI‑7, to the people who believed they were financing history.
Graham tracked arrivals as if reading a markets dashboard. Every set of headlights that turned up the drive confirmed something about his standing. They came in clusters that made more sense to him than tax codes or party affiliations, tribes organized around belief, fear, and the particular flavors of hope Silicon Valley now sold to itself.
🗣️ Announcements 🗣️
🚀 €1M AI Challenge for Space Data Innovation | Apply by March 9 | The Île-de-France Region and CNES officially launch a €1 million AI Challenge to accelerate innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space data. Continuing the Region’s AI Challenge series started in 2019, this initiative aims to foster future national champions and strengthen France’s technological and economic sovereignty. Two tracks are open: (1) AI-powered applications leveraging satellite data for use cases such as security, energy, environment, and risk management; and (2) advanced vision-language models for automatic interpretation of high- and very-high-resolution satellite imagery. CNES will provide data, technical expertise, and project oversight. | Apply via the Île-de-France Region platform: Challenge AI for Space
📆 Events 📆
📆 AI Developer Meetup on Agents & Evaluation | February 19 | Paris | A technical meetup for AI engineers focused on building and evaluating AI agents. Expect deep dives into agent architectures, evaluation frameworks, real-world implementation lessons, and community discussions with fellow builders. | Register to attend
📆 Cafe Cursor Paris | February 25 | Paris | Join fellow Cursor users and AI builders for a full-day coworking session in Paris. Bring your laptop, build alongside other developers, exchange tips, and connect with the local AI community in a relaxed, hands-on environment. | Register to attend
📆 AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 | March 17–18 | ESCP Business School | Paris | Artificial intelligence is transforming universities at every level — from classrooms to research labs and administrative offices. The AI in Higher Education Summit 2026 in Paris will bring together academics, innovators, and policy-makers to discuss one central question: How should higher education evolve in an AI-driven world? This international event is the place to exchange ideas, showcase innovations, and shape the roadmap for universities in the age of AI. | Pre-Registration
📆 OpenText Summit Paris 2026 | April 15 | Palais Brongniart | AI is everywhere and full of promise — but without contextualized data, governance, and security, AI fails. Join OpenText Summit Paris 2026 to discover how to unlock the intelligence of your enterprise data and activate AI with confidence. Expect visionary keynotes, French customer success stories, real-world use cases, in-depth small-group sessions, live demos, expert meetings, and peer networking. Explore the latest innovations in content management, cybersecurity, service management, business networks, and more — and learn how to deploy responsible, compliant AI with full control and freedom of choice. | Register
📆 RAISE Summit 2026 | July 8–9, 2026 | Carrousel du Louvre, Paris | Join one of Europe’s most influential AI gatherings bringing together thousands of builders, investors, executives, and innovators to shape the future of artificial intelligence. Learn from global leaders through keynotes, panels, workshops, a hackathon, startup competitions, and high-impact networking — all curated to accelerate AI strategy, investment, and real-world deployment across industries. | Tickets
👋🏻 If you’re enjoying The French Tech Journal, support the project by forwarding it to friends and sharing it on your social networks. You can also comment on this post. And if you have ideas for stories, tips, or just want to harass us, shoot us an email: [email protected] / [email protected] 👋🏻
