France and Germany Want EU to Start Funding Tech Startups

France and Germany are reportedly making an effort to convince the entire European Union to provide monetary support for technological startups.

According to reports, France and Germany see this initiative as a way to help countries part of the EU to be on the same foothold against other countries that are taking the lead in technological developments such as China and the United States.

The potential that these European countries see in tech startups is not surprising and is, in fact, supported by success stories of various startups that are now known as some of the most influential corporations in the tech industry.

A startup is basically a venture. Adding the technological aspect to it, tech startups are commonly known as organizations with promising software and hardware products in the pipeline. However, they commonly lack funding for their projects to flourish.

So in the past years, it has been very common for multinational tech companies to close acquisition deals involving tech startups. For example, the Android mobile operating system first operated as a startup co-founded by Andy Rubin until it was acquired by Google in 2005. Now, Google is earning from smartphones around the world except those that run iOS and other, smaller operating systems, thanks to the Android OS.

Reports say that Europe is yet to establish a venture capital industry that encourages the increase of startup organizations. So if funding these tech developments will come from the EU itself, it could be the kind of push that the region needs.

A paper of the proposal obtained by Reuters reads, “A joint effort is also needed to further improve the venture capital environment and regulations to allow successful market transfer of breakthrough innovations, as well as the foundation and growth of disruptive deep technology companies in Europe.”

As for France’s own efforts, the country is reportedly willing to allocate up to 1.5 billion euros or around $1.75 billion mostly to fund artificial intelligence startups in the next four years.