Paris will once more turn out to be the middle of innovation and know-how subsequent week, because the 2025 version of Viva Know-how takes place from June 11–14 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. VivaTech has turn out to be the biggest know-how and innovation occasion in Europe, with 160,000 delegates — together with many C-level executives, over 13,000 startups, and three,000-plus traders — attending from everywhere in the world.
The lineup of audio system this 12 months is once more fairly spectacular, that includes Jensen Huang (NVIDIA’s CEO), Joe Tsai (cofounder and chairman of Alibaba), Arthur Mensch (CEO of Mistral AI), Yann LeCun (VP and chief AI scientist at Meta), Mike Krieger (Anthropic’s chief product officer), and Thomas Dohmke (CEO of GitHub) but additionally CEOs of huge corporations comparable to LVMH, L’Oréal, Sanofi, Instacart, Verizon, and lots of extra!
I’ve been attending VivaTech for the reason that starting, and it’s fascinating to see how the occasion has developed for the reason that first version in 2016. In the event you learn my earlier blogs from 2018, 2022, or 2024, you actually get a way of the know-how evolution.
Just a few months after Paris hosted the AI Motion Summit, there isn’t any doubt that AI will proceed to be entrance and heart. Hopefully, the dialogue will deal with the strategic worth of the know-how and the way enterprise leaders may also help their organizations benefit from the AI alternative. Enterprise management of AI technique is a weak spot for many organizations. In keeping with Forrester’s State Of AI Survey, 2024:
- Fewer than 1 / 4 of CEOs are straight accountable for the AI enterprise technique (simply 21% in North America versus 16% in Europe).
- In additional than two-thirds of corporations, the know-how operate (CIOs/CTOs and their groups) — not the enterprise operate — is main AI efforts throughout the group (63% in North America and 71% in Europe).
Past management, there’s nonetheless a large cultural and expertise hole for organizations to benefit from the newest AI developments.
I don’t count on key bulletins however principally debates on the financial, political, societal, and environmental affect of know-how innovation. VivaTech is most of the time a chance to showcase how massive teams innovate with startups and to get a glimpse of the newest know-how improvements, particularly on deep tech (together with cybersecurity and protection tech) and local weather tech. VivaTech not too long ago launched an inventory of the highest 100 rising European startups.
Picture supply: Viva Know-how
Personally, I’ll pay stronger consideration to a number of the local weather tech gamers comparable to 1Komma5° (electrification of buildings), UrbanChain (decentralized power networks), and Treefera (decarbonization options).
Apparently, among the many French Tech Next40/120 Class of 2025 that the French authorities simply introduced, 29 gamers are categorized within the inexperienced tech/agritech sector, together with gamers comparable to Chargemap, Electra, ElicitPlant, Vitality Pool, FAIRMAT, GravitHy, Metron, TSE, and Voltalis.
Most of the startups in attendance will hope to draw new funding and attain unicorn standing. Sadly, there’s nonetheless an excessive amount of hype and fascination round unicorns. Don’t get me mistaken: Financing innovation issues, however it isn’t the panacea. Whereas funding the subsequent era of inexperienced tech will assist, know-how innovation alone will definitely not be sufficient to reside inside the 9 planetary boundaries. Low-tech options, frugal innovation, regulation, new enterprise fashions, evolving client behaviors, and mindset change amongst C-leaders are all much more important.
I’ll be on the occasion and sit up for assembly a lot of you there! In the event you’re a Forrester consumer, please be at liberty to contact your account workforce to arrange a gathering or prepare a dialog with me.
