By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM, May 21 (Reuters) - Paris has been named as

the new European tech champion, beating London for the first

time on some metrics, according to data from Dealroom, which

collects information on startups and venture capital firms.

Between 2017 and 2024, the combined enterprise value of

Paris startups increased 5.3 times, compared with 4.2 times for

London, Dealroom said, after assessing dozens of metrics that

contribute to a successful tech ecosystem.

Although London attracted bigger funding rounds, the actual

valuations of the companies have not increased dramatically,

while the funding rounds secured by Paris-based companies have

had a bigger impact on valuations, it said.

French tech companies, including Mistral AI and Poolside,

raised $7.8 billion last year, less than London's $11.3 billion.

Europe has been falling behind other regions in tech

innovations, with only some countries trying to boost tech

investments.

While the market capitalisation of global tech, media and

telecom companies rose from $7 trillion in 2000 to $34 trillion

last year, Europe's share dropped from 30% to just 7%, a

McKinsey report said on Wednesday.

If Europe had maintained its share, it would have generated

an additional $8 trillion in market value, it said.

Paris is also the only European city on Dealroom's top five

global champions list, which is dominated by U.S. cities.

It comes a month ahead of Paris hosting one of the largest

global tech conferences, VivaTech, featuring top executives from

companies such as Nvidia ( NVDA ), Alibaba ( BABA ), Meta

, OpenAI, Mistral, Anthropic and Cohere. Last year's

conference was attended by more than 165,000 people.

"It's not just about the competitiveness of Paris on the AI

scene today, it's also about what will happen next and how we

can keep on attracting the talent, investment, and the tech

activities," Francois Bitouzet, managing director of VivaTech,

told Reuters.

Since coming to power in 2017, French President Emmanuel

Macron has talked about wanting France to be a world leader in

AI and 'deep-tech', inviting several firms to invest in the

country and pushing for creation of startup incubator Station F.