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Meta, Hugging Face, and Scaleway Unveil 5 Recipients of the AI Startup Recognition

Meta, Hugging Face, and Scaleway Unveil 5 Recipients of the AI Startup Recognition: In a collaborative effort last November, Meta joined forces with the open-source collaboration platform Hugging Face and Scaleway, a prominent European cloud provider for AI infrastructures, to introduce the "AI Startup Program." This initiative aims to expedite the integration of open-source AI solutions into the French entrepreneurial landscape. Meta and its collaborators recently disclosed the identities of the five successful participants in this mentorship initiative.

The AI Startup Program is designed to shepherd five startups through the acceleration phase until June 2024. Launched at the Station F campus, analogous to Microsoft's "Microsoft Generative AI Startup Program," which concentrates on generative AI, Meta's program primarily emphasizes the advancement of open-source principles. Entrants were required to anchor their projects in open foundation models or demonstrate a commitment to integrating such models into their products and services.

The selected startups will benefit from technical mentoring by researchers, engineers, or Ph.D. candidates from FAIR, Meta's artificial intelligence research laboratory led by Yann Le Cun. Additionally, they will gain access to Hugging Face's platform and tools, computing capabilities from Scaleway, and support from the HEC incubator.

Laurent Solly, Vice President of Southern Europe at Meta, remarked:

"We take immense pride in supporting these five innovative projects within the AI Startup Program. Meta has actively contributed to the development of the French AI ecosystem for over 10 years through an open and collaborative approach. This program not only strengthens our commitment but also celebrates the fact that most startups integrate open-source models like Llama2 and DinoV2, conceived within our fundamental research laboratory FAIR, based in Paris."

The 5 startups joining the program:

After a meticulous selection process led by an expert jury evaluating 103 applications, the following five startups emerged as the winners:

1. Jimini AI:
   • Founded in March 2023 by Raphaël Arroche and Stéphane Béreux.
   • Secured a funding of €1.9 million in November 2023 to expedite the development of its legal AI.
   • Leverages GenAI to aid legal professionals (corporate lawyers and attorneys) in tasks such as research, analysis, and the drafting of legal documents.
2. Pollen Robotics:
   • Established in 2016 by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet, former researchers from an INRIA robotics laboratory.
   • Offers an open-source humanoid platform that amalgamates AI and robotics to cater to the needs of both research and industry.
3. Fringuant:
   • Co-founded by Jacques Allibert, Lancelot Convertir, Clément Poiret, and Zoé Tournant.
   • Developed a body scanning solution to minimize returns for online orders.
   • Utilizes captured customer morphology, compared against garment dimensions, to provide precise recommendations not only regarding size but also the fit of the selected garment.
4. Qevlar AI:
   • Co-founded in March 2023 by Ahmed Achchak and Hamza Sayah.
   • Aims to revolutionize cybersecurity operations by intelligently automating the investigation process, a critical yet often time-consuming aspect of this domain.
   • Introduces autonomous agents capable of conducting advanced investigations independently, enabling Security Operation Centers (SOCs) to focus more on rapid response strategies.

5. Kartoon:

   • Develops a mobile application enabling collaborative storytelling in the form of webtoons without the need for drawing skills.