The French atomic bomb, nuclear plants, high speed trains, and planes are not getting leapfrogged though ;)
For some reason French innovation doesn't spread much beyond France. Concorde (I love that plane so much) was an Anglo French project. A lot of my friends parents in the UK midlands were involved with at massive project, but it never scaled to fleets and eventually withered away after an astonishing amount was spent developing it in the '60s ($2.8 billion in that era's valuations).
Not denegrating French innovation here at all, I just don't think the rigid ENA/Ecole Polytechnique elites are practical or competent in understanding how to exploit and build on great ideas by their countrymen.
The biggest EU one is german (not french), it's SAP. At least two french ones are basically french militaro-industrial complex / fake-private actually state-owned ones, being "big" by virtue of sucking french taxpayers money.
I don't know what France's culture is (although I'm a native french speaker and typing this from France) but "producing tech unicorns" certainly ain't part of it.
Also, a nations economy doesn't depend on the number of VC backrd tech unicorns. That France economy has quite some issues ain't news, the perceived lack of tech unicorns (if there ever was a pseudo-SV centric view of things, that's a front runner), is none of them.
Also, the US Navy is buying a French/Italian frigate design to replace, sorry, I meant support the littoral combat ships that don't work. The only reason Australia cancelled the contract for French is that, all of a sudden, they got nuclear ones.