French AI firm Pigment secures $250 million to compete with microsoft

Pigment, a French artificial intelligence company, has secured $250 million in funding, aiming to challenge Microsoft's dominance in productivity software. The funding round, set to be announced on Tuesday, values the company at $2.3 billion. The Scaleup Europe Fund led the investment, with participation from Nvidia Corp. and World Innovation Lab, a U.S.-Japan-based fund, as well as existing investors Iconiq, IVP, and Meritech Capital. Pigment's offerings, which include tools rivaling Microsoft's Excel and PowerPoint, represent a significant push by a European startup to compete with an American tech giant. The investment underscores growing interest in European AI innovation and its potential to disrupt established market leaders. The company's focus on productivity software highlights a broader trend of AI-driven competition in the enterprise software space.