Former French President François Hollande returned to Montpellier on May 28, 2026, with a blunt message for France’s startup scene: the conditions that helped launch “French Tech” a decade ago have vanished.
Hollande—who created the French Tech initiative during his presidency, alongside then-digital minister Fleur Pellerin—came to open the fifth edition of Hello la Tech, hosted by French Tech Méditerranée at the MoCo Panacée cultural venue. He found a more organized, more ambitious local ecosystem, but one now facing a global tech fight he said few anticipated in 2013.
“The world in which French Tech was launched is behind us,” Hollande told an audience of entrepreneurs and local decision-makers, according to Midi Libre. “The one that’s coming is rougher, more uncertain.”
French Tech at 10: a success story, with a harsher global reality
Since its creation, French Tech has become one of the few public-sector innovation programs in France to produce a visible ecosystem at the European level. Montpellier is often cited as a regional example, with a concentration of digital players, growing startups, and an annual gathering point in Hello la Tech.
Montpellier Mayor Michaël Delafosse used the day to reiterate that economic development is “a priority” of his term, praising Hollande as the leader “who sparked French Tech.”
But Hollande’s core argument was that 2026 is not 2013. U.S. giants—OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon—have turned generative AI into a market-conquest tool at a speed that caught many off guard. China, including with DeepSeek, has shown it can compete technically at lower cost.
France can point to Mistral AI, widely hailed as one of the few credible European responses. Still, Hollande and organizers framed the gap in funding and computing power versus U.S. labs as enormous.
Hollande said France and Europe need to move faster—not to beat the United States at its own game, but to avoid losing control of technological sovereignty. He cited cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and independence in digital infrastructure as central challenges, aligning with issues the European Union has been trying to tackle for years with mixed results.
He also offered a characteristically self-deprecating aside about political time horizons: “When you create a policy, you don’t always measure what it will become, because a five-year term is short. Two is sometimes too much.”
Tassadit Quivi becomes the first woman to lead French Tech Méditerranée
The event also marked a leadership handoff. Hollande attended the transition from Sébastien Lacaze to Tassadit Quivi, who becomes the first woman to head French Tech Méditerranée, according to l’Hérault Tribune.
It was a symbolic moment in a sector where women remain underrepresented in top leadership roles. Hollande used the occasion to call for giving “even more space to innovation.”
Behind the broad phrasing sits a practical problem: regional ecosystems like Montpellier’s still struggle to access the same resources as Paris-based startups, whether in venture capital or international visibility. The push to decentralize French Tech isn’t new, but it takes on a different urgency when the competition is framed as San Francisco or Beijing.
Hollande says AI will shape France’s 2027 presidential race—on stage and behind the scenes
Hollande also tied the day’s tech focus to politics, with the irony he’s known for. With AI dominating conversations at the event, he predicted it will sit at the center of France’s next presidential campaign.
“There are elected officials who speak like AI. You can tell because they’re more coherent,” he joked. “You’ll see during the presidential election, everyone will talk about AI and some candidates will speak AI. It’s up to you to unmask them!”
The line landed as humor, but it also pointed to a real shift: the 2027 presidential contest is already shaping up as the first in France where AI is both a campaign issue and a tool for producing political messaging.
For the French Tech community in Montpellier, Hollande’s appearance served as a high-profile amplifier. Even out of office, the backing of a former president carries political weight for an ecosystem trying to influence national decisions on AI funding and digital sovereignty. Quivi takes over a recognized organization—but one facing a more demanding agenda by the month.
