PARIS — When President Emmanuel Macron took office, he took pains to include two iPhones in his official portrait, a symbol of his penchant for technology. Millennials throng as he buzzes from one French start-up event to the next. He has wined and dined the chief executives of the world’s largest tech companies, who in turn have vowed to invest billions in France.

Yet a year after Mr. Macron unveiled an aggressive agenda to turn France into “a start-up nation,” it is unclear if reality has kept pace with his rhetoric. While the country has quickly become one of the most talked-about destinations in Europe for tech companies and start-ups, France still faces an uphill path in its bid to usurp London as the region’s technology leader.

The French president has carefully cultivated a tech-savvy image, promoted a steady drumbeat of high-profile events, and even pushed through a raft of economic and labor reforms to make his country more appealing to investors. But France continues to lag Britain in tech-related investments and in the business of artificial intelligence. Start-ups still face challenges in scaling up. And a lot of seed funding comes from the French government itself.