French President Emmanuel Macron is pushing France’s flagship startup program to prioritize “strategic” companies tied to French and European technological sovereignty—moving away from the fundraising-and-growth scorecards that long defined the rankings.
The message was staged with care: the French government unveiled the 2026 class of the French Tech 120 and Next40 at Aqemia, a startup that blends artificial intelligence and quantum physics to speed up drug discovery. Now part of the Next40, Aqemia reflects what Paris says it wants to elevate—deep tech with heavy scientific content, not just fast-scaling digital platforms.
Macron paired the shift with a direct call to “accelerate” and defend European technological sovereignty, marking a break from earlier years when the program largely celebrated capital raised and international expansion.
Next40 2026 breaks with a purely financial scorecard
For years, the Next40 functioned like a leaderboard of growth champions. Names such as BlaBlaCar, Qonto, Doctolib, Back Market and Contentsquare repeatedly appeared, selected on raw economic performance. The approach gave visibility to France’s digital standouts, but it didn’t necessarily say anything about their strategic value to the country.
The 2026 class is designed to change that. Julie Huguet, who leads Mission French Tech (the French government unit that runs the program), put it plainly: “The French Tech 120 and the Next40 have long been a purely economic, factual snapshot of the ecosystem.” For the first time, the index adds an explicitly political dimension, with selected startups expected to meet criteria tied to technological sovereignty, national competitiveness and the common good—not just post impressive dashboards.
“French Tech must serve the country’s strategic interests and societal progress,” Huguet said, a repositioning that elevates deep tech and AI startups and turns the list into a more direct tool of industrial policy.
From Aqemia to unicorns: the long arc of public support
The pivot builds on a longer trajectory of state-backed support. The article points to 2019, when Macron announced €5 billion (about $5.4 billion) for French hyper-growth startups, with the stated goal of reaching 25 unicorns within two years. That effort leaned on institutional investors and tailored regulatory support for scale-ups, following the Tibi report.
In 2026, the machinery remains similar, but the target has shifted: not simply the fastest unicorn, but the unicorn deemed most useful to France and Europe.
“Choose European Tech” expands the model beyond France
The sovereignty push is also being framed as a cross-border effort. At the VivaTech trade show, France launched “Choose European Tech,” a European extension of its “I choose French Tech” initiative.
Eight countries joined as founders: France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and Serbia. The goal is to boost public and private procurement in favor of European technologies.
“It’s an important movement,” Huguet said at the launch. Anne Le Hénanff, France’s junior minister for AI and digital affairs, added: “Our startups are not only French, they are also European.” The push comes as the European Commission works to reduce the continent’s digital dependence on the United States and China in areas including chips, cloud services and AI.
Deep tech and AI move to the center as platforms fade
The new doctrine is visible in the kinds of companies being showcased. Aqemia—combining AI and quantum physics for pharmaceutical research—embodies the updated priority: science-heavy technologies with potential dual-use applications rooted in strategic sectors. In this framing, high-growth digital platforms without deep industrial anchoring are no longer the main reference point.
The shift also lands amid a broader European debate about AI being concentrated among a small number of U.S. players. Arthur Mensch, the CEO of Mistral AI, has repeatedly emphasized “sovereignty” in response to what he calls an “oligopoly.” The Next40’s new criteria, as described in the article, align the state more openly with that argument: a French startup is expected to be useful to France, not only profitable for shareholders.
A sharper mission raises new questions about who gets left out
Mission French Tech has existed since 2013. Turning the Next40 into an explicit industrial-policy instrument raises a practical question: how to balance sovereignty-based selection with international competitiveness. Prioritizing “strategic” companies implies choices—and exclusions. Consumer-facing digital players, marketplaces or fintechs that don’t make the cut could argue the new approach tilts the playing field.
Huguet has acknowledged those criticisms. Her answer, according to the article: the broader French Tech 120 remains open to digital champions such as Doctolib, Qonto and ManoMano, while the Next40 now adds a layer of political judgment that earlier classes did not. The 2027 class will be the test of whether the shift holds—or whether traditional financial metrics regain the upper hand.
