French AI boss calls for youth mobility scheme
The boss of one of France’s most successful tech start-ups has thrown her weight behind calls for a youth mobility scheme between the EU and UK, warning that Europe must have access to deep pools of talent to stand a chance of competing in the AI arms race.
Eleonore Crespo, co-founder of business planning unicorn Pigment, said loosening youth immigration restrictions between the EU and UK – and improving talent mobility generally – was the “number one thing” that would help European AI founders compete with the US giants in the sector.
Asked whether she would support the visa, Crespo told CityAM: “Yes. If you think about the AI war, it’s a talent war. That is the only thing that matters today. And so everything we can do to make both of our countries more attractive is the number one thing we can do.”
Crespo made her comments shortly before joining the likes of Octopus boss Greg Jackson and HSBC chief Georges Elhedery at a summit of British and French business leaders for Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to the UK.
Earlier in his visit the French President also called for “exchanges for students, researchers [and] artists” during his speech in Parliament, adding that the UK and France could not “allow the Channel to go wider”.
Lowering visa requirements for young travellers and workers has become one of the European Union’s flagship demands in its ongoing post-Brexit negotiations with Britain. Keir Starmer’s political opponents have branded any deal as “freedom of movement through the back door”, and he has so far swerved committing to the proposal.
But Crespo, whose firm employs dozens of people in its London outpost, warned those barriers to travel were hindering her business, adding it made her “sad” that she now needed a visa to see her staff.
She said: “I have created a massive team here, and I’m coming here all the time for business. [Making immigration barriers higher] is not the direction I would like Europe to go towards, because it’s not helpful for businesses.”
The French boss made her intervention as an aggressive corporate arms race for high-skilled engineers and AI experts in the US intensifies. Mark Zuckerberg has been offering engineers at the likes of OpenAI and Synthesia a reported $300m to join Meta’s new ‘superintelligence lab”.
Pigment ‘super bullish’ on UK
Despite the persistence of migration red tape, the Pigment boss added her firm remained “super bullish” on the UK, and had plans to make it the firm’s largest market in Europe.
“We are expanding our team. We are going to hire many people and create many jobs in the UK, because for us it’s going to be – over time – our number one European market [and] probably our second market after the US,” she said.
Crespo, whose firm is now valued at north of $1bn, joined 10 French business leaders at Wednesday’s Downing Street summit. The chiefs at AI darling Mistral, logistics juggernaut CMA CGM and water and waste management firm Veolia also joined the meeting.
Veolia announced a £70m investment into Britain to mark the summit, which it said would help fund a major new recycling facility in Shropshire.