I have this issue too, going back to PL6 or 7 (I can’t remember which). PL takes around 2min 30s to start on my Win 11 laptop (but only a few seconds on my Mac).
There was a thread with another person with this issue some while ago: Starting DxO -> got Loading Time about 7 Minutes
I went through a series of emails with DxO support - check logs, am I running anything else at the same time, update drivers, etc.
After an update PL did suddenly startup in a few seconds, but after a few uses it resorted to taking a couple of minutes again. I now feel the brief improvement startup time was a coincidence with something else happening with my machine, but I still don’t know what.
My machine still takes around 2.5mins for PL to start, I’ve now just accepted to live with it…