from the that-doesn’t-sound-good dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the months leading up to the implementation of Australia’s social media ban in December 2025, there was much discussion about the possible negative consequences.

Among these were concerns that teenagers would consume less news. As most young adults use social media for news and many rely on it, this was a real risk.

So months on, has this come to pass? In our newly-published research, we found the more young people are impacted by the ban, the more likely they are to report they are getting less news and having less opportunity to discuss news and the issues that matter to them.

Our research

In February we surveyed 1,027 young people aged 10 to 17, just two months after the legislation took effect.

As part of a longitudinal survey that has examined young Australians’ news engagement since 2017, we asked young people questions about the ban’s impact on their social media use and their news engagement.

First, we investigated if the ban had affected young people’s social media use by asking them if their engagement with each banned platform had changed at all, and if so, whether the change was a complete stop or if they just used it less.

We found 61% of under-16s who had previously been using banned platforms reported little or no change in their social media use. For the majority of young people surveyed, the ban was ineffectual.

In fact, only one in four (26%) reported their social media use had been affected.

Next, we asked young people if the ban had affected their engagement with news.

For those whose social media use was significantly disrupted, the result was stark: 51% reported getting less news as a direct result of the ban.

This finding is a significant concern because it suggests that as the ban becomes more “successful”, with a greater number of young people being removed from platforms, their news engagement will fall in parallel.

The impact on civic involvement

A 2025 report from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, based on testing of year 6 and year 10 students, finds school students’ civics knowledge is the lowest it has been since testing began 20 years ago. This is despite most young people believing it’s important to take action in the community on issues that matter to them.

Our findings show that when young people are impacted by the social media ban they lose access to news about issues they care about. They are also talking less about news and finding fewer opportunities to share their views or take other forms of action.

Our previous research shows news engagement makes young people feel knowledgeable and more capable of responding to issues.

A large body of research also shows news interest and engagement is closely associated with civic engagement. The more engaged people are with news, the more likely they are to become involved in community and social issues.

Social news or no news

It’s unlikely that being cut off from news on social media will lead young people back to traditional news sources.

Most young Australians say they don’t feel represented or heard by traditional news organisations. They also feel the news mainstream outlets create isn’t accessible to young people and doesn’t focus on the issues that matter most to them.

In our survey, 75% said news organisations have no idea what their lives are actually like, and 71% said they find it difficult to find news relevant to people their age.

Our earlier research also shows Australian news organisations rarely include young people in news stories. When they are included, they are seen but not heard.

For instance, young people are shown in news stories in photographs and video footage ten times more than their voices are heard or they are quoted in stories.

In addition, another study of news has shown that when young people are included in breaking news events, they are often stereotyped as being lazy, dangerous and entitled.

These findings demonstrate some of the reasons young people have likely turned to social media for news in recent years.

So what should we do?

It’s likely that over time, more young people will be cut off from social media as loopholes in the ban are ironed out. This emphasises the need to find ways to encourage young people to engage with other news sources in productive and meaningful ways.

A key concern is trust. We need to educate young people about the importance of news to democratic process, providing them with insights into how high quality journalism is produced and supporting them to make informed decisions about who and what to trust online.

This can happen as part of media literacy education but this requires investments in high quality curriculum resources and teacher training.

In Australia, we are in the fortunate position that we already recognise the need for media literacy in the Australian curriculum. High quality news literacy resources are being produced by the ABC through programs such as BTN (Behind The News), and other organisations such as Squiz Kids.

At the same time, to develop trust, mainstream news organisations need to do a much better job of representing young people in fair and inclusive ways so they feel seen and heard.

Finally, it’s important to recognise that amid all of these changes to young people’s technology access, our research shows family is the first and most trusted source of news for young people. We need to help parents understand the important role they play in helping their kids navigate the news.

Michael Dezuanni is Professor, Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology; Simon Chambers is a Postdoctoral research fellow at Western Sydney University, and Tanya Notley is Professor in Digital Media at Western Sydney University

Filed Under: australia, journalism, news, social media, social media ban, teens

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Dataware house gambles cloud conveniences, AI accelerated insights will justify the cost.

Cloud data warehouse Snowflake plans to spend $6 billion on Amazon’s custom Graviton CPUs and AI accelerators over the next five years.

The collab aims to reduce friction in connecting Snowflake customer data with a growing number of AI services built atop AWS’ cloud infrastructure.

“We are making it easier for enterprises to bring AI directly to governed data, so they can move faster, operate with greater density and create measurable impact at scale,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a canned statement.

Snowflake is a long-time AWS customer, having built the company atop the cloud titan’s servers going back to 2011. Over the past few years, Snowflake has shifted an increasing amount of compute from Intel and AMD CPUs to Amazon’s own Arm-based Graviton instances.

Now in their fifth generation, Amazon’s latest Graviton processors cram 192 Arm Neoverse V3 cores which are fed by 12 channels of memory up to 8800 MT/s.

As we’ve previously reported, CPUs are back in the spotlight again after years of being overshadowed by GPUs and other AI accelerators.

The models themselves still run on GPUs, but the tools and functions those models call — a SQL query or Python script, for example — do not. Those workloads still rely on CPUs.

This has driven renewed demand for CPU cores as each agent’s performance is inherently limited by how quickly the processor can service the request.

Under the agreement, Snowflake will run and train its GenAI models and services using a combination of GPUs running in AWS and Graviton CPU cores. For example, Snowflake says that its Cortex AI platform can convert natural language to SQL queries, summarize data, and conduct sentiment analysis.

According to Amazon, Snowflake’s lifetime AWS marketplace sales crossed $7 billion and exceeded $2 billion during the 2025 calendar year. Clearly the data warehousing platform is betting these AI tools will continue to drive revenues enough to justify splashing $1.2 billion a year on additional infrastructure.

Gamble or not, Wall Street doesn’t seem to worried, with Snowflake rallying by more than 30 percent in after hours trading Wednesday.

Snowflake isn’t the only company diving deeper into Graviton’s orbit. Back in April, Meta revealed plans to deploy tens of millions of Amazon’s Graviton 5 CPU cores. The multi-year collaboration was expected to make the social network one of the biggest consumers of AWS’ homegrown silicon.

Much like Snowflake’s $6 billion investment in Amazon’s infrastructure, Meta’s cloud spend is largely aimed at securing cores for AI agents.

But unlike Snowflake, which for better or worse remains heavily reliant on AWS for compute, Meta’s tie up may only be a stopgap while it awaits Arm’s buzzword-packed AGI CPUs. ®

The Glassworm botnet targeting developers in software supply-chain attacks has been disrupted after researchers took down its resilient command-and-control infrastructure relying on Solana blockchain transactions and the BitTorrent DHT network.

​In a coordinated operation conducted  yesterday, CrowdStrike, Google, and The Shadowserver Foundation cut off the botnet operators’ access to four distinct command-and-control (C2) channels designed to resist conventional disruption efforts.

Glassworm campaigns have been ongoing since October 2025 and initially targeted developers with malicious OpenVSX and Microsoft VS Code extensions that stole cryptocurrency wallets and developer credentials.

Later attack waves extended to GitHub repositories and npm packages, with one campaign in March impacting more than 400 software artifacts.

In a more recent attack, Glassworm operators planted dozens of dormant extensions on OpenVSX that would activate the malicious component after an update.

One reason the Glassworm threat has survived this long is its C2 infrastructure, which relies on non-traditional communication channels that are difficult to take down.

“The combination of blockchain, peer-to-peer, and legitimate web services as resolution layers was designed to be resilient against takedowns — a dynamic front protecting the actual C2 servers behind multiple layers of indirection,” CrowdStrike notes.

The researchers say that “Glassworm’s operators built their infrastructure for resilience,” and taking down the botnet required hitting the four C2 channels simultaneously:

1. Solana blockchain: C2 server addresses are encoded in the memo fields of blockchain transactions, creating an immutable, publicly accessible dead drop that cannot be taken offline by conventional means.
2. BitTorrent Distributed Hash Table (DHT): The GlasswormRAT queries the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network for configuration data stored against hardcoded public keys, leveraging a global decentralized network with no single point of failure.
3. Public calendar service: Glassworm uses Google Calendar event titles as dead-drop locations for Base64-encoded C2 paths.
4. Direct server connections: Traditional C2 infrastructure hosted on commercial VPS providers served as the final payload delivery mechanism.

​Because of this architecture, disrupting a single channel would have little impact on the Glassworm operation, as communications could shift to another channel, allowing the threat actor to maintain control.

“All four channels had to be disrupted simultaneously in a coordinated effort. As a result, infected machines can no longer receive new instructions or payloads,” CrowdStrike says.

Following the disruption, all machines compromised in a Glassworm attack are beaconing to the IP address 164.92.88[.]210 operated by CrowdStrike.

Organizations are advised to look for this network indicator and take immediate remediation action. Additionally, the researchers have published YARA rules to confirm infections on suspected hosts.

Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.

This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.

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Sony launched “MLB The Show Mobile” for iPhone and Android with free-to-play monetization and high hardware requirements as it pushes deeper into the mobile sports market.

Sony says it built “MLB The Show Mobile” from the ground up for smartphones instead of adapting the console version of “MLB The Show” directly. The company centered the release around collectible player cards, progression systems, and competitive multiplayer modes.

Promotional material tells players to “Build your team. Set your strategy. Stack rewards.” Sony is also using pre-registration bonuses to pull existing “MLB The Show” players into the new mobile ecosystem.

Sony released “MLB The Show Mobile” as a free download, but the App Store listing heavily promotes paid card packs, season passes, booster bundles, and virtual currency.

In-app purchases range from $2.99 player cards to a $99.99 “1st Inning 20 Booster Pack Bundle.” The pricing structure mirrors free-to-play sports games built around recurring purchases and collectible progression systems.

Sony’s launch material prominently promotes pack-opening mechanics and collectible progression. One section of the company’s press release tells players to “Open packs and hunt for the cards that transform your lineup” as part of a mode called “Chase the Ultimate Pull.”

“MLB The Show Mobile” includes more than 900 player cards alongside solo progression modes and head-to-head best-of-three PvP matchups. Sony also says the game features officially licensed MLB teams, athletes, and all 30 MLB stadiums.

In-app purchases range from $2.99 player cards to a $99.99 “1st Inning 20 Booster Pack Bundle.”

“MLB The Show Mobile” carries higher hardware requirements than many mobile sports games, particularly on iPhone. Apple’s App Store listing says the game requires iOS 26 and an iPhone with an A12 Bionic chip or later, including devices as old as the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.

The App Store listing also shows “MLB The Show Mobile” can require up to 4.66 GB of storage depending on downloaded assets and updates.

“MLB The Show” already operates as a live-service title on consoles through modes like “Diamond Dynasty.” The mobile version keeps that same progression loop through rewards, roster collection, and recurring purchases.

Late on May 25, 2026, monitoring cameras caught an event that combined two dramatic forces in one frame. Mount Mayon volcano in Albay province on Luzon had already been sending streams of glowing lava down its slopes for months. Staff at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology kept watch through equipment positioned on Lignon Hill in Legazpi City, including a color camera that records activity around the clock.

Around 10:33 p.m. local time, a bright green ball plummeted into the high sky from the color feed. It expanded out into a brilliant streak before zooming down as if it were heading straight for the volcano, as the entire thing appeared to be careening in that direction. Then, in a flash, it blazed brightly before disappearing completely. That whole burn lasted only around one second: the first thought for many people who saw the clip was, did this thing actually reach the slopes?

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Teams examined every piece of data available, including seismic instruments, infrasound detectors, and footage from other cameras, all of which pointed to the same conclusion: that object never touched the earth and did not even make it to the volcano. It simply split apart high in the atmosphere. A little later, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology issued a statement claiming that they had witnessed no impact and that what they were seeing was so visually spectacular because the volcano was right there in the foreground.

These fireballs are caused by small asteroids or comets being blasted into the atmosphere at great speeds, as friction with the air generates a lot of heat and converts the surrounding air into a bright, flaming plasma. The green color comes from the combination of speed, composition, and atmospheric conditions in that brief time. In this case, the green stood out against the constant stream of red and orange lava flows below.

Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, described it as simply a beautiful video of an unusual coincidence; a volcanologist who saw it described the juxtaposition of this sudden streak from above and all that lava moving steadily along below as a clear clash of two very powerful natural forces. Another of the scientists remarked that this small shard, roughly the size of a coffee cup, briefly managed to divert everyone’s attention away from the much larger volcanic spectacle going on.
[Source]

ContourGlobal, the independent power producer backed by KKR, has inaugurated a nearly $500 million solar-and-storage facility in Chile’s Atacama desert that stores daytime solar energy and delivers it after sundown. The Victor Jara hybrid plant combines 231 megawatt-peak of photovoltaic capacity with 1.3 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, capable of delivering 200 megawatts of power for up to 6.5 hours at night. ContourGlobal calls it Latin America’s longest-duration utility-scale battery system.

The project sits in the Tarapacá region and is backed by a 15-year nighttime power purchase agreement with Copec EMOAC, the energy marketing and renewable power supply arm of Empresas Copec, one of Chile’s largest industrial conglomerates. It is ContourGlobal’s second solar-and-storage investment in Chile, following the launch of a similar system in Quillagua in the neighbouring Antofagasta region last year. Together, the two projects deliver 452 megawatt-peak of solar and 2.5 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.

Why the Atacama

The Atacama desert receives some of the highest solar irradiance on Earth, making it one of the most productive locations in the world for photovoltaic generation. The problem is that the sun produces more electricity during the day than Chile’s grid can absorb, resulting in routine curtailment, wasted energy from solar plants that are forced to shut down because there is nowhere for the power to go. Transmission bottlenecks between the solar-rich north and the demand centres further south make the problem worse.

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Battery storage solves this by absorbing excess solar generation during the day and discharging it at night, effectively turning an intermittent energy source into a dispatchable one. Solar-plus-storage projects are increasingly being designed to serve round-the-clock power needs, including the growing demand from data centres that require constant, predictable supply.

James Lee Stancampiano, ContourGlobal’s South America general manager, said Chile is the place to be in Latin America, citing the country’s regulatory framework, growing electricity demand, and pipeline of renewable energy and storage investments. The company is evaluating additional projects in Chile, including developments closer to the capital Santiago and wind projects in the central and southern regions.

A storage boom in numbers

Chile currently has 3,072 megawatts of battery energy storage capacity either operating or undergoing testing, with most projects concentrated in the Atacama desert, according to the Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional (CEN), the national grid operator. CEN projects the start-up of an additional 5,400 megawatts of storage capacity by December 2026. Battery energy storage systems now make up nearly 42% of Chile’s energy project pipeline by capacity, the largest single category.

The investment is not coming from a single player. AES Andes, Engie Energía Chile, and Enel Green Power Chile all have storage projects in the country. Atlas Renewable Energy, backed by BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, secured $510 million in financing last year for its hybrid Estepa project, one of Chile’s largest solar-plus-storage developments. Grenergy, the Spanish developer, is building the Oasis de Atacama complex, which it describes as the world’s largest solar-plus-storage project.

Mining, data centres, and the demand driver

What makes Chile different from other solar-rich markets is its industrial demand profile. The country’s mining sector, which produces roughly a quarter of the world’s copper and a significant share of its lithium, is one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet. Mines operate around the clock and need reliable, predictable power. They are also under increasing pressure from customers, regulators, and investors to decarbonise their operations.

Antonio Cammisecra, ContourGlobal’s CEO, said the presence of a highly energy-intensive industrial base, particularly mining, has driven demand for reliable, long-term renewable power. He framed storage as the technology that shifts renewables from intermittent sources into programmable energy solutions, a transformation he called essential for reducing system costs, accelerating decarbonisation, and replacing conventional generation at scale.

Data centres are the emerging demand driver. The global push to electrify everything, from industrial processes to AI compute, is creating new markets for round-the-clock renewable power. ContourGlobal expects growing demand from data centres that need large amounts of always-on electricity, and Chile’s combination of cheap solar, storage infrastructure, and political stability makes it a credible location for facilities that would otherwise be built in the US or northern Europe.

The model that could scale globally

Chile’s approach, building massive solar capacity in the desert, pairing it with battery storage, and selling nighttime power under long-term contracts, is a model that other solar-rich regions are watching closely. The economics are compelling. Solar generation costs continue to fall, battery prices have declined by roughly 90% over the past decade, and the combination of the two is now competitive with or cheaper than new gas-fired generation in most markets.

The 15-year nighttime PPA structure used by ContourGlobal is particularly noteworthy. It de-risks the battery investment by guaranteeing revenue for the discharge cycle, making the storage component financeable on project finance terms rather than merchant risk. This is the kind of contractual innovation that unlocks institutional capital for storage at scale.

Hybrid renewable energy projects are becoming the standard rather than the exception. Chile’s Atacama desert is the most advanced laboratory for this transition. By the end of 2026, the country will have more than 8,400 megawatts of battery storage capacity online, enough to make it one of the largest storage markets in the world, built in a desert that until recently was known primarily for astronomy and copper.

Threat actors are targeting systems with high-performance computers in an ongoing cryptojacking campaign spread through a coordinated SEO poisoning operation that also manipulated AI chatbot recommendations.

​The compromise occurs through malicious download pages for utility software typically installed by owners of powerful systems, like CrystalDiskInfo, HWMonitor, Display Driver Uninstaller, FurMark, K-Lite Codec Pack, and PDFgear.

Once a system is infected, the attacker gets persistent access on the machine by deploying the legitimate remote management ScreenConnect tool, which could later be used to install additional malware.

Microsoft researchers discovered the campaign and determined that the attack begins when users look for one of the aforementioned utilities and are presented with malicious links boosted in search rankings through SEO poisoning.

However, some reports in April indicated that users were directed to the malicious domains after interacting with AI-based assistants.

“In these cases, users querying AI chatbots for software download recommendations were presented with links to attacker‑controlled domains within generated responses,” Microsoft says.

The malicious download is a ZIP archive hosted on a subdomain at gleeze[.]com, a domain that has been flagged in the past for being associated with phishing websites.

According to Microsoft, the archive includes the legitimate executable for the legitimate utility as well as a malicious DLL that is automatically loaded when launching the benign binary.

The researchers found that the DLL uses msiexec.exe to install vcredist_x64.dll, which is a package installer for the ScreenConnect remote access tool.

After establishing a ScreenConnect session with the compromised client, the threat actor drops another binary named SimpleRunPE.exe that copies itself as RuntimeHost.exe into a folder hidden in Explorer.

The purpose of the executable is to establish “six persistence mechanisms across multiple Windows autostart locations.”

In some cases, the binary is dropped via a malicious PowerShell script and is saved locally as vlc.exe, in an attempt to impersonate the executable for the popular VideoLAN multimedia player.

Based on SimpleRunPE.exe’s Program Database (PDB) path, the researchers believe that it is a fork of a public repository for demonstrating the process hollowing technique.

The threat actor resorted to this technique for stealth and tried process hollowing into a legitimate .NET binary signed by Microsoft: InstallUtil.exe, RegAsm.exe, RegSvcs.exe, MSBuild.exe, AppLaunch.exe, AddInProcess.exe, aspnet_compiler.exe.

To the same purpose, the malicious binary also invokes PowerShell to add its path and process to the exclusion list in Microsoft Defender.

Additionally, the malware checks the environment for virtual machines and a set of 40 process names corresponding to analysis tools. If any are identified, the malware terminates its execution.

After completing the process hollowing stage and the malware runs inside a Microsoft-signed Windows utility, one of three mining modules is downloaded and executed.

The supported mining programs are gminer, lolMiner, and SRBMiner-MULTI, all of them designed to use graphics processing units (GPUs).

Microsoft says that this cryptocurrency campaign stands out for its “targeting and monetization strategy engineered from the ground up to maximize GPU mining yield per compromised device,” instead of focusing on volume.

Apart from the defenses provided by Microsoft’s tools, organizations can protect their environments using the indicators of compromise included in the report.

Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.

This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.

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Rivian has finally revealed that the first customers of the company’s new R2 SUV will get their vehicles on June 9.

The automaker has spent the last few months ramping up its efforts to release the R2, which is more affordable and aimed at a larger market than its current R1 lineup. The new SUV will initially be available in a trim that starts just under $60,000, though Rivian has announced plans to release a “standard” version that starts at $48,490 in 2027.

The company has teased an even more affordable version “starting around $45,000” late next year — a price tag Rivian has promoted since the R2 reveal in 2024.

Rivian has high expectations for the R2. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has said it is “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date.” The company is betting on an extremely fast ramp-up, with as many as 25,000 vehicles delivered by the end of this year. Ultimately, Rivian hopes the R2 and its hatchback sibling, the R3, will help the company turn a profit for the first time since its founding in 2009.

A new report on the French tech ecosystem by Alexandre Dewez, a partner at venture firm 20VC, paints a picture of a startup scene that is growing more dependent on a handful of AI companies while the rest of the market stalls. French startups raised €6.7 billion across 411 funding rounds in 2025, a 5% decline in capital and a 21% drop in deal volume compared with the previous year. The numbers stand in sharp contrast to the US, where startup funding grew 38% year on year, and Europe as a whole, which saw a 12% increase.

The report, based on roughly 100 slides of data covering funding, exits, unicorns, and sector trends, argues that France minted its first decacorn but is struggling to build the breadth of winners that would signal a maturing ecosystem. Mistral’s Series C at an €11.7 billion valuation was the headline achievement of 2025, but the AI lab accounted for 25% of all capital raised by French startups that year. Strip out Mistral and the picture looks considerably weaker.

AI dominates, but France lacks category leaders

AI was the main growth engine of the French ecosystem in 2025, accounting for 23% of funding rounds, up from 13% in 2024, and 43% of all capital raised, up from 27% the year before. France also produced several mega seed rounds for foundation model companies, including H at €212 million, Genesis at €97 million, Gradium at €64 million, and Bioptimus at €32 million.

But the report makes a pointed observation: unlike other European countries, France lacks clear category leaders in AI’s most commercially valuable segments. The UK has ElevenLabs in voice. Sweden has Lovable in vibe-coding. Germany has Parloa in customer success and n8n in AI automations. Even Mistral, France’s flagship AI company, is not dominating its category against OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta.

Mistral’s European nationality, which enables companies seeking a sovereign AI option, has become its main differentiation point rather than technical superiority. The company has lost its early open-source edge and is competing in a multi-modal AI market where the largest US and Chinese players have significantly more capital and compute.

Pennylane was the standout performer

The report names fintech Pennylane as the French startup of the year for 2025. The accounting software company crossed €100 million in annual recurring revenue, growing 130% year on year, and raised two rounds in a single year at valuations of €2 billion and €3.9 billion respectively.

Pennylane has expanded from pure accounting software into an ERP and neobank for French small and medium-sized businesses, and opened operations in Germany. It is a rare example of a French startup executing at growth scale with the kind of metrics that attract top-tier international investors.

Defence is the second hottest sector after AI

European defence tech startups raised $1.6 billion in venture funding in 2025, a 148% increase year on year, making defence the second-largest growth category after AI. Within France, 18 defence startups raised €228 million, a 25% increase on the previous year.

The biggest signal came in January 2026, when Harmattan became France’s first defence unicorn after raising a $200 million Series B led by Dassault Aviation, the maker of the Rafale fighter jet. Harmattan builds autonomy and mission-system software for defence aircraft, and French president Emmanuel Macron publicly praised the deal as a win for the country’s strategic autonomy.

The broader European defence tech boom is being driven by geopolitical pressure, with governments across the continent increasing spending in response to the war in Ukraine and shifting transatlantic security dynamics. Germany has captured the largest share of European defence tech capital, but France is carving out a position in AI-enabled military systems.

US funds are taking over French venture capital

One of the report’s most striking findings is the degree to which US capital now dominates French startup funding. American funds were involved in rounds accounting for 55% of the total amount raised in 2025, and their capital has been concentrated in AI companies, particularly foundation model builders like Mistral, Genesis, and Gradium.

At the Series A level, only 30% of the 20 best rounds in 2025 were led by French funds. Pan-European funds led 60% and US funds led 10%. The report notes that where Index Ventures, Accel, and Balderton were historically the only pan-European firms consistently leading one or two French Series A rounds per year, at least 15 pan-European funds now do the same.

French VC funds are caught in what the report calls the “messy middle,” losing top Series A deals to international funds and top pre-seed and seed deals to a growing crop of French micro-funds with €5 million to €35 million under management. Several French funds are struggling to raise their next vintage, and when they do, they are raising smaller funds than before. Top talent is leaving.

San Francisco is pulling French founders westward

The AI boom has reasserted San Francisco’s dominance as the centre of the global tech industry, and French founders are responding. Multiple early-stage founders are actively building between the Bay Area and Paris, including the teams behind Poolside, Genesis, Zero Entropy, and Anyshift. French venture firms Founders Future, Frst, and Hexa have opened offices in San Francisco.

Entrepreneur First, the British accelerator, closed its Paris office in October 2025 to focus on its US programme. Since launching in Paris in 2018, roughly 700 entrepreneurs had passed through the programme and helped build more than 100 startups. Its departure is a signal that even institutions designed to nurture European founders see the gravitational pull of the US as too strong to resist.

Exits hit a five-year low

The exit picture is bleak. French startup exits totalled €5.3 billion in 2025, a 65% decline year on year and the lowest figure in five years. The IPO market remains largely closed to European tech companies, and trade sales have not filled the gap.

Secondaries have become the dominant source of liquidity, with both VC-led transactions, such as Descartes with Battery Ventures, and PE-led deals, such as Brevo with General Atlantic, providing the main exit routes. This is not a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Secondary sales provide partial liquidity for early investors but do not generate the kind of large-scale returns that attract new capital into the venture system.

France has produced 47 unicorns to date, defined as startups that have been worth at least $1 billion at some point. The report estimates that 36, roughly 77%, are still likely worth $1 billion or more based on recent fundraising, revenue, or headcount growth. The remaining 11 have likely fallen below the threshold, a reminder that unicorn status is not permanent and that the French ecosystem still has a maturity problem when it comes to building durable, large-scale companies.