Paris's iconic startup campus, Station F, hosts over 1,000 startups each year. Sifting through 1,000 startup descriptions is difficult, so Station F selects the 40 most promising startups and shares a list called the Future 40. The campus has also invested in 10 of these startups (though the list has never been made public).
The 10 startups the company invests in are part of programs run by Station F itself or partners such as Binance, LVMH, Meta, and Microsoft.
Station F's flagship program is the Founder Program. Companies apply to participate in this highly competitive accelerator program and are invited to attend workshops and classes to rapidly iterate on projects and get products market-ready as quickly as possible. Station F currently has a 1% stake in these startups.
But Startup Campus also runs a Fighters program designed specifically for entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have also run industry-specific programs in the past, such as the FemTech program, when the Station F team has determined that startups in a particular industry need additional support.
AI everywhere
Startups in this year's batch have already raised €93 million (just under $100 million) to date. Entrepreneurs work in a variety of fields, but 34 out of 40 startups use artificial intelligence. It is clear that all new startups will incorporate AI in some form in the future.
Looking at this year's Future 40 startups, several names include Arago, a startup working on new AI-focused chips that use optical technology at the chipset level to speed up operations; stands out from the selection. or Exxa, a startup that optimizes AI inference to lower the rate per token.
At a time when innovation in AI model development has slowed significantly, we expect to see more startups focus on optimizing AI workloads.
Others include Altrove (a startup I mentioned earlier) and Entalpic, both working on materials research. These are just two startups in a new wave of materials companies that are turning to AI to accelerate development.
This year's Future 40 also features a significant number of startups working on energy optimization. For example, Optimmo is a remote companion that helps homeowners improve the energy performance of their homes and apartments with the most efficient renovations. Kelvin is another interesting home energy retrofit startup that we've already covered.
Orus Energy is a software solution that shifts energy loads to off-peak hours. These optimizations can help businesses save money and reduce their carbon footprint.
There are many other startups worth mentioning, but we'll keep this selection short so you can directly explore the following 40 companies (full list below). TechCrunch has already covered some of them, including Koyeb and Presti.
Here is Station F's complete list of this year's Next 40 startups.
.omics (Dotomics): .omics creates personalized plants that meet the demands of a changing climate and evolving world, including increasing food security for a growing population and advancing sustainable plant-based medicines. We are working on important social issues.
.txt (dottxt): .txt is the tool that makes the LLM trustworthy enough for the world to build on. The team is creating an ecosystem where developers can design, run, deploy, and evaluate LLM applications.
Altrove: Altrove uses the latest advancements in AI models and lab automation to develop and manufacture replacements for critical but unsafe materials needed to achieve net zero, moving the needle between predictive and industrial applications. Close the gap. The company's patent-pending technology allows it to develop new materials 100 times faster than before.
Arago: Arago creates unique components that overcome both computing and memory limitations using a completely different medium: light. Arago was founded by a trio of AI researchers and physicists from École Polytechnique and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and executives from major AI and semiconductor companies, including GM of Arm, CTO of Intel, CSO of Hugging Face, and VP of Apple. We are receiving support from
Biolevate: By harnessing the power of AI, Biolevate turns massive amounts of data into actionable insights, accelerating the discovery of breakthrough treatments and changing the pace of innovation. They automate boring and complex tasks, freeing up the brightest minds to focus on what really matters: revolutionary scientific discoveries.
Bluco: Bluco helps companies fill vacancies within a week by bringing AI to messaging apps and integrating it into current recruiting platforms.
CarbonFarm: CarbonFarm is a pioneer in satellite-verified carbon credits for rice and other agriculture. These provide additional revenue for farmers who adopt sustainable practices, while helping businesses achieve their net-zero goals. CarbonFarm has raised a seed round of €2.5 million.
CleanMob: CleanMob is a B2B car green technology that revolutionizes automotive telematics by enabling companies to improve the performance and productivity of their vehicle fleets using connected car data and cutting-edge virtual sensor technology.
COMIN: COMIN is the first ride-hailing platform to offer a fair, sustainable and participatory model to reinvigorate urban mobility by empowering drivers and providing passengers with affordable and environmentally friendly rides. Built to define.
Corma: Corma built IT Copilot to monitor, manage, and automate software licenses and identity.
Drawbridge Labs: Drawbridge Labs is building the studio of the future, based on a SaaS platform for computer-generated imagery (CGI) production, to empower a new generation of content creators. The founders are entertainment industry veterans with senior leadership experience at Disney, Pixar, and Wētā Digital.
Entalpic: Entalpic is an AI company dedicated to accelerating materials research to foster a just ecological transition. The team is developing a machine learning platform to optimize chemical reactions, reduce CO2 emissions in key industrial processes, and discover new catalysts that have significant environmental impact.
EXXA: EXXA is building the most efficient batch inference infrastructure to handle high-volume workloads and generate high-quality tokens at a fraction of typical costs.
Formality: Formality helps companies and their legal teams secure revenue and control spending thanks to an automated contract monitoring platform.
ICONO: ICONO allows media creators to create their own AI video search engine.
Jimini: Jimini's mission is to automate most low-value tasks, allowing legal professionals to focus on higher-value work. AI-powered co-pilots help law firm experts and in-house lawyers research, analyze, and draft with unparalleled efficiency and accuracy.
Kelvin: Kelvin is a B2B SaaS that generates home energy retrofit plans. Earlier this year, the startup raised €5 million. CEO Clémentine Lalande is a graduate of the Central University of Paris and the Technical University of Berlin. She is the former CEO and co-founder of Once, a dating app that grew to 12 million users across eight European countries.
Koyeb: Koyeb provides a serverless cloud that allows developers and teams to seamlessly deploy apps and databases to high-performance infrastructure around the world. The platform is the fastest way to run low-latency AI workloads, web applications, and APIs globally.
Kulipa: Kulipa has created a debit card issuer for cryptocurrency wallets. Make crypto payments smoothly and quickly wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted. Using a white-label platform, we offer solutions that cover both technical and regulatory requirements for card payments.
Leadbay: Leadbay is a domain-specific AI model for B2B sales that is trained on companies in the local market and its knowledge domain (CRM, ERP, CSV) and can predict your next customer.
Leanear: Leanear enables organizations to secure multimodal AI solutions by going beyond traditional perimeter security to protect data in the cloud.
Leasi: Leasi is revolutionizing the way consumers access technology products, making it more flexible, economical and environmentally friendly.
Moneco: Moneco is a French-speaking African diaspora neobank based in Europe. These allow users to easily open a bank account (all you need is a passport) and access a wide range of financial services (FR IBAN, international VISA cards, P2P, wire transfers, instant remittance to Africa) .
Neuralk-AI: Neuralk-AI develops proprietary AI-embedded models specialized for structured data representation, enabling companies to build custom AI solutions that precisely interact with their own structured data.
Optimmo: Optimmo accelerates energy retrofits with cutting-edge technology that enables all property owners to achieve their optimal retrofit scenarios 100% remotely.
Orus Energy: Orus Energy is an energy flexibility software that allows consumers to automatically shift flexible loads away from carbon peak hours, thereby supporting grid balance and resiliency.
Pollen Robotics: Pollen Robotics is revolutionizing the field of robotics by creating open source humanoid robots that address important challenges in automation. Their mission is to empower the AI community with cutting-edge human-like robots designed for complex physical tasks, increasing efficiency and solving labor shortages across industries.
Presti: Presti helps furniture companies create product visuals using AI. Unlike other generative AI tools, its core model is optimized for furniture products and includes multiple features tailored to the unique needs of the furniture industry. Earlier this year the team raised 3.5 million euros.
Qevlar AI: Qevlar AI revolutionizes security operations centers with autonomous, explainable, AI-powered alert investigation. It integrates seamlessly into any environment and leverages existing resources to perform comprehensive analysis and provide actionable insights to analysts.
Raidium: Raidium pioneered the first-ever fundamental model of radiology, known as the “GPT” of radiology. This AI breakthrough aims to create an imaging biomarker factory for clinical and research purposes built into an AI-native platform to address the complexities of precision medicine.
Rakoono: Rakoono is the first AI learning partner in every student's pocket. Powered by machine learning, LLM, and VLM, Rakoono analyzes questions step-by-step, generates quizzes for upcoming deadlines, creates exercises based on student passions, and educates parents with weekly progress reports. We will provide you with the latest information.
Rounded: Rounded is a comprehensive platform that enables any enterprise to easily assemble, deploy, and monitor AI voice agents at scale.
Steerlab: Steerlab is an AI-first solution that enables presales teams to automate over 80% of responses to requests for proposals (RFPs), security questionnaires, and other vendor documents.
Syntetica: Syntetica uses green chemistry to close loops in synthetic fibers, including nylon. Founded in 2023, the startup has raised €4.2 million in a seed round led by EQT Ventures. The team is working with Victoria's Secret and ETAM as its first customers, providing 100% recycled nylon material.
Theremia: Theremia is an AI-powered platform that creates drug derivatives that target specific population subgroups, particularly neurological diseases. By leveraging multiscale algorithms and advanced machine learning techniques, drug characteristics such as dosage, frequency, and formulation can be optimized to increase efficacy and minimize side effects.
Twelve: Twelve is an AI practice management software for dental offices.
Twenty: Twenty is a modern, powerful, and affordable open source CRM platform for managing customer relationships. Built around customer data and adaptable to unique workflows, Twenty is designed to meet the evolving needs of fast-growing companies.
Upstream: Upstream is an email client designed for team collaboration. We're adding features like channels and task tracking to popular email clients, so your teams have full context and transparency into every conversation and can make decisions more efficiently.
Vazy Data: Vazy Data is a simple and intuitive AI data analytics co-pilot that helps businesses manage decision-making easily and quickly.
Veeton: Veeton is a cutting-edge AI platform that develops unique models that transform the image of fashion. It generates photos on models from flat images, allowing brands to create high-quality visuals quickly and at scale.