Looking for a way to protect technology companies from becoming prey to foreign buyers, France has created a fund to bail out startups.
Bloomberg News reported that the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance allocated 150 million euro ($170 million) through its government-backed lender, Bpifrance Financement SA, to invest in French companies if they are targeted by an unsolicited foreign investor.
In a statement on Friday (June 5), the government said it may increase the fund to 500 million euros ($567 million) next year. Its mission will be to protect the country’s businesses by taking minority stakes in strategic companies, the news service reported.
The infusion of cash is part of the nation’s stimulus package for the technology industry as France tries to keep investors at bay.
In April, the French government passed a 300-euro ($339 billion) stimulus package that guarantees up to 90 percent of eligible loans to companies registered in France. The loans, a collaboration between the Finance Ministry, Bpifrance and the French Banking Federation, provide a 12-month payment deferral and an option for the borrower to repay the loan over five years, Proskauer reported.
In addition, France is adding a 100 million-euro ($113 million) program for companies that are still in the research phase, but don’t qualify for state-backed loans, the Ministry said on Friday.
U.S. lawmakers have taken a different approach to protecting small and medium-sized businesses. In April, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called on the White House and the U.S. Treasury Department to place a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the COVID-19 crisis.
PYMNTS reported that the Democrats introduced the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act, which would curb M&As during the coronavirus pandemic. No action has been taken on the bill. If approved, the measure would prohibit M&A transactions until the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) determines that small businesses, workers and consumers are no longer under severe financial distress. It would encompass all M&As that involve companies with more than $100 million in revenue or financial institutions (FIs) with more than $100 million in market capitalization.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has formed an artificial intelligence (AI)-centric health partnership with General Catalyst.
AWS says the collaboration, announced Monday (Jan. 13), combines its tech expertise with General Catalyst’s history of healthcare investments.
“AWS and General Catalyst believe that AI has immense potential to [effect] meaningful change in global health care,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in a news release. “Together, we are taking bold steps to improve patient outcomes and make quality care more accessible to all by embedding AI throughout the care journey.”
According to the release, the partnership will focus on building and deploying AI-powered solutions to address crucial needs in predictive and personalized care, interoperability, operational and clinical efficiency, diagnostics and patient engagement.
The potential here is “vast,” the companies said, with plans to employ the power of generative AI using Amazon Bedrock and team with providers like Anthropic and Mistral AI as well as securely trained health care-specific models.
“One example is the ability to drive more personalized health care by using disease-specific models that process diverse health data—such as radiology and pathology scans, genomic sequencing information, clinical trial data, and electronic health records—to help doctors and researchers identify patterns and diagnose, make predictions about treatment outcomes, offer insights into disease progression, and more,” the release said.
Writing Monday about the intersection between generative AI (GenAI) and healthcare, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster posited a world in which “your doctor knows you’re getting sick before you do” and healthcare is more of a “proactive partnership” than a thing to worry about.
“GenAI has the potential to shift the conversation — and time and dollars spent — from how much it costs to make people well when they get sick to preventing illness before it even begins,” Webster wrote. “That will make the future of healthcare about using GenAI to better understand and prevent disease. Interactions with the patient will become patient-first and smart-technology driven.”
The economics, that report adds, are “compelling,” as U.S. healthcare costs — which came to nearly $5 trillion in 2023 — are projected to reach $7.7 trillion by 2032. Many consumers, especially younger ones, say they’ll skip or delay medical care because they can’t afford it.
“That’s not just expensive — it’s unsustainable,” Webster wrote.
“By using intelligent monitoring devices and personalized health insights, it’s possible to dramatically reduce the cost of chronic disease management. Medication can be remotely prescribed, administered and monitored as appropriate, staving off a full-blown, expensive and potentially physically debilitating medical crisis.”
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