🤖 In this week's edition:

🧠 Late payments are quietly rising again across Europe, with delays worsening despite fewer offenders. Paris-based Cleavr just raised €1M to automate collections, cut delays by up to 40%, and fix one of finance’s most persistent inefficiencies.

Chris O'Brien + Helen O'Reilly-Durand

SPONSORED

Paris Blockchain Week 2026 marks a clear shift toward an institutional-first approach. Taking place on April 15–16 in Paris, the event focuses on how digital assets are being integrated into regulated financial systems, with discussions centered on adoption, market structure, custody, compliance, and financial infrastructure.

Hosted at the Carrousel du Louvre, with an invitation-only gathering at the Château de Versailles, Paris Blockchain Week convenes senior decision-makers from finance, regulation, and market infrastructure, positioning digital assets within existing financial systems rather than alongside them.

Confirmed participants and partners include S&P Global, Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Invesco, the European Commission, Circle, Ripple, Cardano, and Bybit, reflecting the growing institutional involvement in digital assets across Europe and beyond.

Learn more about the agenda and participation opportunities at Paris Blockchain Week 2026.

Get your ticket

Headlines

🗞️ The New Mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, wants to build a second Station F… but make it AI. The newly elected Paris mayor is proposing a massive “Station IA” hub in the north of the city, designed to bring together startups, researchers, and public data under one roof. The goal: turn Paris into a global capital for “AI for the public good,” with access to compute power, datasets, and real-world testing through the city itself. It’s part tech strategy, part political statement in a bid to position Paris as a more ethical counterweight to Silicon Valley. | Maddyness

🗞️ AI is starting to show up in the French economy, but much more quietly than in the U.S. While American growth is being noticeably boosted by a surge in digital investment, France is seeing only a modest lift so far, with AI-related spending contributing just a small fraction to GDP growth, according to the latest quarterly report from national statistics agency INSEE. Where things get interesting is on the supply side: in both France and the U.S., AI is already reshaping the labor market, with productivity rising in tech-related sectors even as employment declines, especially for younger workers entering the field. Adoption is happening fast in certain industries like tech, finance, and consulting, but remains uneven across the broader economy. The bottom line: AI’s macro impact in France is still early and fairly muted, but beneath the surface, it’s already beginning to rewire how work gets done and who gets hired. | INSEE

🗞️ Mistral AI’s independence is starting to look… expensive. The French AI champion is leaning heavily on Nvidia for compute power, raising questions about how “sovereign” Europe’s flagship model maker really is. The trade-off is clear: cutting-edge AI requires massive infrastructure, and for now, that still largely means American tech. | L’Usine Digitale

🗞️ Speaking of Mistral, Arthur Mensch wants Europe to rethink AI copyright. The Mistral AI boss is calling for a mandatory contribution from AI model providers to compensate content creators, arguing that voluntary schemes won’t cut it. The proposal adds fuel to an already heated debate over how to fairly share value in the generative AI economy. This proposal, sparking immediate backlash, positions Mistral at the center of the fierce European debate over compensating intellectual property owners in the generative AI landscape. | Maddyness

🗞️ France is moving to tighten the rules on AI and content. A proposed law would introduce a presumption that AI models use protected cultural content, effectively shifting the burden of proof onto AI providers. If adopted, it could significantly reshape how models are trained and regulated across Europe. | L’Usine Digitale

🗞️ Ledger is heading to Wall Street. The French crypto security firm is opening a New York office to get closer to institutional investors, signalling a push beyond retail and deeper into global finance. For a company built on self-custody, it’s a strategic step into the heart of traditional markets. | Les Echos

🗞️ French prosecutors are zeroing in on Elon Musk and X, raising the stakes over a bizarre deepfake scandal that’s now crossed into financial territory. They suspect the uproar around Grok-generated sexualized images may not have been accidental, but potentially stoked to inflate the valuation of X and its AI arm ahead of a planned IPO. The case has gone international, with French authorities flagging their concerns to the US Department of Justice and the SEC, signaling possible market manipulation alongside ongoing probes into political interference and harmful AI content. Musk, for his part, has dismissed the investigation in characteristically blunt terms, calling it politically motivated. | Le Monde

🗞️ A decade in, Alan is doubling down on its core idea: health insurance should focus on prevention, not just paying for illness. And it’s bringing in mega soccer dude Kylian Mbappé as investor and partner to embody that shift. Alongside the headline move, it’s launching a suite of new products, including an AI health assistant and advanced diagnostics and workplace health service. They're aimed at making care more proactive and personalized. The bigger ambition is to turn Alan from an insurer into a full-stack health platform that blends tech, care, and everyday habits. | Twitter

🗞️ AI is fuelling a patent boom in Europe. The European Patent Office reports that over 200,000 patent applications were filed in 2025, driven largely by artificial intelligence. The surge highlights how fast innovation is accelerating—but also how competitive the global IP race is becoming. | L’Usine Digitale

🗞️ AI meets microbiology. French startup Spore.Bio claims it can detect and quantify micro-organisms in under 10 minutes, dramatically speeding up testing processes for industries like food and pharma. If it scales, it could replace slower lab-based methods with near real-time analysis. | L’Usine Digitale

🗞️ Cybercrime is going full industrial. According to recent reports, AI is helping hackers organise like businesses, with production chains, specialisation, and profit logic. From automated phishing to scalable attacks, cybercrime is becoming faster, cheaper, and more structured—bad news for everyone else. | L’Usine Digitale

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

🧠 Europe’s €1 Trillion Late Payment Problem Is Getting Worse — Cleavr Thinks AI Can Fix It

Late payments are one of those quietly accepted dysfunctions of European business. Everyone complains about them, yet few actors seem to address them.

Interestingly, late payments are simultaneously improving in Europe while worsening. 

According to France’s payments observatory (l’observatoire des délais de paiement), a majority of SMEs and micro-enterprises now pay within the legal 60-day window. Yet around 30% of companies still pay late, and only half of large firms settle invoices on time. More strikingly, average delays climbed back to 13.6 days in late 2024, now above the European average (12.1 days in 2024).

Fewer offenders. Bigger delays.

That contradiction sits at the heart of a growing fintech opportunity - and it’s exactly where Paris-based startup Cleavr is positioning itself.

“It’s very heterogeneous,” says Baptiste Nassoy, co-founder and CEO of Cleavr. “You have companies that are more disciplined - but the ones who are late, are really late.”

Welcome to accounts receivable, the last operational casse tête AI hasn’t properly touched. Until now.

📆 Events 📆

📆 Fin x Anthropic: Building Trust in AI Agents | March 25 | 5:30 PM–8:30 PM | Paris | A deep dive into what it takes to move AI from pilot to production in enterprise environments. Join leaders from Intercom (Fin) and Anthropic to explore how trust is built across AI systems — from safety frameworks like Constitutional AI to guardrails, QA loops, and ROI-driven deployment. Expect candid insights on enterprise adoption, buyer psychology, and scaling AI agents both internally and for customer-facing use. | Request to join

📆 Cursor Meetup Paris | March 26 | Paris | Paris’s first Cursor community meetup of 2026, bringing together engineers, product managers, designers, founders, students, and AI/tool enthusiasts for an evening of networking, live Q&A with an engineer from the Cursor team, lightning showcases from the community, and casual social time with pizza and drinks — open to all AI builders and creators looking to connect and share insights. | Request to Join

📆 TRAE & AWS - Vibe Coding Workshop | March 31 | Paris | Join us for an exclusive AI Vibe Coding Workshop, co-hosted by TRAE Fellows and an AWS AI Specialist. Supported by ShallWe Tech and Unicorn Mafia. ​​This is an opportunity to connect with a thriving builder community, gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI tools, and unlock a range of exclusive benefits and resources. ​​The workshop is designed to deepen your understanding of the latest AI-powered development tools — a space to solve real problems, exchange ideas, and turn your vision into reality through technical sharing, live demos, and open discussion. | Request to Join

📆 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

📆 Paris Blockchain Week 2026 | April 15–16, 2026 | Carrousel du Louvre, Paris | Europe’s premier gathering for the institutional digital asset ecosystem, bringing together 10,000+ founders, investors, policymakers, and corporate leaders from 100+ countries. The event covers the future of digital finance — from tokenized assets and stablecoin payments to institutional custody, regulation, and market infrastructure — through keynotes, panels, startup competitions, and high-level networking. | Get tickets

📆 AI Now Summit by Mistral AI | May 28 | Paris | A one-day summit focused on moving AI from theory to real-world impact, bringing together tech leaders, builders, researchers, and executives deploying AI at scale. Hear from global CEOs, Mistral’s founders, and leading practitioners on building production-ready AI systems, scaling from pilots to enterprise use cases, and unlocking measurable business value across industries. | Register

📆 VivaTech 2026 | June 17–20, 2026 | Paris Expo Porte de Versailles | Europe’s largest startup and technology event returns for its 10th anniversary, bringing together 180,000+ attendees, 14,000 startups, 3,600 investors, and thousands of global tech leaders. Expect world-class speakers from companies like NVIDIA, Mistral AI, Hugging Face, Meta, and Anthropic, alongside startup showcases, investor meetings, product launches, and major conversations shaping the future of AI, tech, and innovation. | Get tickets

📆 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

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