In Niel, ByteDance has discovered a board member who revels in difficult the institution. Simply as TikTok has lured eyeballs away from the likes of Instagram and YouTube, Niel’s telecoms agency was additionally an outsider within the Nineteen Nineties, trying to rival the telecoms giants often known as France’s massive three: Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom. He additionally has direct expertise clashing with competitors. In 2013, Niel’s ISP Free blocked all net adverts by default. The transfer, seen as an assault on Google throughout negotiations about whether or not the tech large ought to pay to make use of Free’s infrastructure, sparked main backlash. In that battle, after strain from the federal government and free on-line web sites, Niel backed down.
The billionaire can also be a staunch believer in numerous algorithms. Once we met in July, earlier than his ByteDance appointment was made public, he was preoccupied with the kind of techno-nationalism rife in Europe, after 20 years trailing American success. “I do not need my children counting on US algorithms.” If there’s going to be bias, says Niel, he needs that bias to be European. “I really like the US. That’s not the purpose. However we’re utterly totally different in our method of seeing the world.”
If Europe needs to compete with Asia and the US on AI, he believes the continent has to behave now. “If you wish to create a search engine now from scratch, you can’t win, as a result of you weren’t there 25 years in the past,” he says, noting this window to compete on AI can even shut.
In a method or one other, Niel is linked to virtually all of France’s rising startup stars. In Mistral AI, valued at €5.8 billion ($6.4 billion), he’s an investor. The identical goes for H, one other new AI firm. Scaleway, the cloud supplier utilized by Mistral, is an Iliad subsidiary, whereas the group behind Hugging Face, a platform for AI builders, hung out at Station F, an unlimited startup campus additionally launched by Niel. A self-described “geek,” Niel has lengthy been embedded within the French startup scene. Station F was launched seven years in the past, and earlier than that, he was central to an experimental laptop science college known as École 42.
His perception that Europe ought to pursue homegrown AI translated right into a €200 million ($220 million) funding he made in French AI final September. Half of that cash went towards launching Kyutai, a nonprofit analysis lab based mostly in Paris, which launched an AI voice assistant this summer time known as Moshi. Just like OpenAI’s voice assistant, Moshi can also be a flirty English-speaking feminine voice. However in contrast to OpenAI, which delayed its launch as a consequence of security issues, Moshi has been out there to check on-line since July—with its fashions launched this week.
“The thought of Kyutai is to supply an AI algorithm that’s utterly open science and open supply,” says Niel. He makes use of the working system Linux for example of an open supply device with the type of recognition Kyutai needs to copy. “Relying on the license we’ll connect to this factor, all people who will make a modification should publish it.”
