France Country Commercial Guide
Learn about the market conditions, opportunities, regulations, and business conditions in france, prepared by at U.S. Embassies worldwide by Commerce Department, State Department and other U.S. agencies’ professionals
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Digital and ICT
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Overview

Despite economic and geopolitical uncertainty throughout 2024, the French digital sector has remained resilient, but an unusual slowdown was registered. The total market size of France’s digital market in 2024 is estimated to be 76 billion dollars. The market is divided among the three following activities: ESN/digital services (50%), software publishing (39%), and engineering and technology consulting (11%). The global ICT sector in France represents close to 30,000 companies, including numerous highly specialized SMEs, and the sector employs over 660,000 people.

In 2024, the French digital sector experienced an industry-wide growth of 3.5%.  Although all business lines reported higher sales, service activities were particularly affected by the slowdown in growth. The political and economic uncertainty felt in the French economy in 2024 has weighed on companies’ abilities to plan and anticipate their investments. In addition, despite the boom in the artificial intelligence sector, French companies are struggling to acquire the AI talent necessary to grow, and at times are finding difficulties defining use cases for artificial intelligence technologies. By some estimates, French business uptake of generative AI technology was at 10% in 2025, behind the EU average of 13%, Germany at 20%, and the U.S. at 65-78%.

Leading Sub-sectors 

  • Cloud Computing (+ 27% growth in 2024)
  • Big Data (+ 15.7% growth in 2024)
  • Cybersecurity Solutions (+ 11.9% growth in 2024)
  • Sustainable Digital Services (+ 27% growth in 2024)
  • AI Services (+ 5% growth in 2024)

Opportunities 

Analysts expect the French digital market to continue to grow in the following areas: cloud consulting and systems integration; digital transformation; the collection and use of data; 5G and edge computing; cybersecurity; and especially artificial intelligence. 

France has an ambition to be the AI hub of Europe, with government officials, including President Macron, promising aggressive investments into AI training and research.  Since 2018, France has allocated over $540 million per year as part of its “National Strategy on AI” aimed at enhancing research, development, and education in France through 2026. President Macron hosted a global AI Action Summit in February 2025, at which Vice President Vance presented U.S. priorities.

Although French company Mistral AI has experienced significant attention, France has yet to produce any large global players in AI, so there is likely a significant opening for investment and development opportunities as France looks to grow domestically in this sector. 

While market growth in consumer software and services hovers around 7.5%, the cloud market continues to expand at a rapid rate of 27%.  The cloud (and especially the public cloud) market continues to be an attractive commercial opportunity, with the IaaS being particularly dynamic.   

France’s “Cloud at the Center” (Cloud au centre) doctrine is a French government policy that prioritizes cloud computing as the default model for public-sector IT, while imposing strict sovereignty, security, and data-protection requirements. It encourages the use of commercial cloud services—public, private, and hybrid—provided they comply with French and EU rules, particularly regarding protection from extraterritorial laws such as the U.S. CLOUD Act. The doctrine underpins frameworks such as SecNumCloud certification and “trusted cloud” arrangements that combine global technologies with EU-controlled operations.

The doctrine does not exclude U.S. cloud providers but significantly conditions market access. U.S. firms can participate directly for non-sensitive workloads, or indirectly for sensitive government and regulated-sector data through partnerships, licensing, or joint ventures with EU-controlled entities that meet SecNumCloud requirements. This has driven U.S. hyperscalers to adopt sovereign-cloud models in France, increasing compliance costs but preserving access to a large and strategically important market.

Cybersecurity in France is a $4.9 billion market and has continued to grow by roughly 10% each year for the past several years. This growing demand arises as the French economy continues to digitize and severely damaging cyber-attacks become increasingly common. For example, several hospitals were victim to major cyber-attacks which caused significant disruption to hospital operations and severe breaches in patients’ privacy. Similarly, in 2024, a series of cyber-attacks targeted several French institutions, including government ministries, underscoring the fact that even state entities are vulnerable to such threats. The 2018 “Network and Information Systems Security Act” imposed strict security requirements on digital service providers as they become an increasingly essential service to the public.  

However, French companies still have a long way to go considering they have devoted only 10.7% of their respective IT budgets towards cybersecurity. With the increase in cyber-attacks targeting all different kinds of organizations, danger awareness has improved widely. Therefore, opportunities are significant in this area, as companies increase their investment in solutions to protect themselves. 

American tech companies are still viewed as leaders in the computer services and software sector with key players such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Dell, Adobe, IBM, and Oracle having large market shares. However, the French and EU governments have implemented a variety of digital policies that have significantly affected how American companies operate in these markets. Most notably, digital policies and regulations such as the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act have created a challenging environment in the French market, especially for large American platform providers.  Nevertheless, high growth in many ICT subsectors represents an opportunity for business investment, entry, and expansion.

Trade Events

There are many shows related to ICT, the U.S. Commercial Service in France can assist in identifying the trade show best suited to each subsector and industry vertical (AI, Cybersecurity, blockchain, industrial IT solutions, e-commerce, and social marketing, etc.).  
All IT sectors: Tech Show – Paris, 18-19 November 2026
General Tech event for start-ups and scale-ups: Vivatech – Paris, June 17-20, 2026.

Resources 

  • Numeum (French ICT sector trade association) 2022 review and 2023 Outlook
  • OECD.AI Policy Observatory
     

Contact: U.S. Embassy France - U.S. Commercial Service Trade Specialist
Rose-Marie.Faria@trade.gov +33 (0) 1 43 12 71 49

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