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VivaTech 2024: Visions, Ventures, and Vitality in Tech Innovation

This year, we’ve decided to explore 3 major themes that will shape the future of our societies in the weeks, months and years to come: Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability and Mobility. We’ve brought together leading companies and the most influential speakers to debate topics such as Internet & Democracy, Resilient Ecosystems, Future of Societies, Creators’ Economy and many more. We’ll also be welcoming major corporations and startups from all over the world to highlight the richness of the international tech ecosystem with ground-breaking innovations.

At this year’s Viva Technology – a startup and Tech event located at the Porte de Versailles, in Paris France – you’ll be able to see the likes of Esper Bionics and Biped AI, which use AI to enable people with motor problems or blindness to live their lives autonomously; healthcare solutions with Primaa, which fights cancer; and the future of mobility with Volocopter and its eVTOL, not forgetting the presence of Tesla and its entire ecosystem, whose mission is to accelerate the global transition to more sustainable energy. This is only a small part of our program, as we promise many surprises for this 8th edition.

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Photo Credit: Silicon Luxembourg

Which speakers are you the most excited about hosting on stage this year? What unique ideas or insights are you hoping they’ll share with attendees?

We’re delighted that our speakers include some of the biggest tech leaders in the Artificial Intelligence sector, such as Arthur Mensch (Mistral AI), Jonas Andrulis (Aleph Alpha), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), Thomas Clozel (Owkin) and many others.

But also younger profiles with a very interesting vision of what AI should be, such as Sneha Revanur (Encode Justice). Linda Yaccarino (X) and Meredith Whittaker (Signal) will also be must-sees at Viva Technology on all subjects concerning the future of media. We’ll also be hearing from political figures such as Thierry Breton, Marina Ferrari, Charles Michel and John Kerry.

And last but not least, this year we’re lucky enough to welcome Venus and Serena Williams as part of their involvement with startup Shares. We know that each of the speakers will bring a fresh perspective on the future of our societies, which is – and will become even more so over time – intrinsically linked to technology. We’re convinced of this, and hope that our visitors will be too, and that everyone will leave with a head full of new ideas. But if you want to find out more, you’ll have to attend these talks!

Compared to other global Tech events, what unique experiences can attendees expect at VivaTech 2024?

What sets us apart from other events is the significant presence of major corporate groups – corporate innovation players who attend Viva Technology to discover new products and establish relationships with startups. Any startup can visit their booths, demo their products and engage in conversations with their decision-makers. This opportunity is invaluable, considering how challenging it can be for connecting startups to identify the right decision-makers within large corporate groups and initiate conversations with them.

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Attendee testing Meta’s VR. Photo credit: VivaTech

What’s all the buzz about “Startup Thursday” this year? Any specific workshops or mentoring sessions that founders should know about?

It’s not Tacos Tuesday but rather Startup Thursday 😉

As usual, our 4 day conference program covers a wide range of topics that are of interest to startups. However, this year we have decided to take it even further by designing a dedicated educational program for startups at Stage 4 on Thursday, May 23rd. Anyone working for a startup will have the opportunity to learn best industry practice and leave with key takeaways they can apply to their business. Topics include growth and scaling strategy, IPO & exit strategy, talent recruitment, social-first marketing and more. You can find the full program of Startup Thursday here.

What about this year’s Startup Challenges and VivaTech Awards? How are you planning to help founders get better, more relevant meetings with corporates and close deals on-site?

Months before VivaTech 2024, some of the world’s biggest challenges and awards open up for startups to apply for a chance to compete onsite at VivaTech. Every year, there are almost 50 challenges from partners like the LVMH Innovation Award and Orange Startup Challenges to VivaTech’s own Female Founder Challenge.

This year set a new record with over 6,200 applications from 90 different countries. Startups selected through the challenges have the opportunity to either exhibit with corporate groups and then get closer to them during the 4 days of Viva Technology, or pitch their product onstage to their decision makers. It’s definitely the best gateway to corporates.

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2023 Female Founder Challenge winner, Suzanna Stamirowska, Founder and CEO of Pathway onstage. Photo credit: VivaTech

Speaking of networking, how is VivaTech planning to enhance the overall networking experience for startups during the event, including meeting investors?

We are thrilled this year to present a new dedicated lounge for startups founders and CEOs. This lounge allows them to meet with their peers, grow their network, forge new collaborations.

We also host “Founders Discussions” there – intimate sessions designed for founders to ask their questions and pick the brains of successful founders or experts who share advice on key business topics, ranging from product development to fundraising, go-to-market strategy, internationalization, hiring and more. You can find the full program of Founders Discussion here.

New this year too, the Connection Hub – where startups can get 5 pre-qualified meetings with potential business partners (CTOs & CMOs) who are looking for a turnkey solution they can solve with their product.

We’ve also added a networking feature to our mobile application, enabling everyone to connect and expand their contacts. And this year, the mobile application is getting a makeover with VivaTech AI Copilot, an AI-powered conversational bot that takes the visitor experience one step further, offering them the chance to discover sessions and exhibitors that are closest to their interests.

We also arrange meetings for our awards finalists with key investment funds whose investment thesis match with their products. For example, Clarisse Hagège, winner of the Female Founder Challenge 2021 and founder & CEO of DNFS, raised €12.3 million in seed capital in 2022 shared that “VivaTech allowed me to meet my mentor who later put me in touch with the right people for my fundraising and to have credibility with investors.”

Last but not least, we’re also delighted to invite all startups to many side events! Indeed, VivaTech’s program doesn’t stop at Porte de Versailles, and extends far beyond, with parallel events – breakfast, afterwork, evening – promising meetings, exchanges and good times. And the fun begins on Wednesday evening, May 22, with Viva Night! As part of the event, the Rue Montorgueil in Paris is privatized, and the bars are taken over by investment funds. Startups can go from bar to bar and pitch their product in a convivial setting.

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Europe recorded €108 billion from exhibitions and events in 2024, according to UFI’s latest data. The continent welcomed 102 million visitors to over 2,000 certified exhibitions across 17 countries; Web Summit Lisbon set a record with 71,528 attendees in November 2024, making it the largest edition to date; and Stockholm’s Techarena secured just over €1 million from VC firm BackingMinds to expand internationally. By any reasonable measure, Europe’s events space has absolutely crushed the events game. End of story. Fin. However, from where I’m sitting, the elephant is still lurking quite comfortably in the room. At the risk of being ostracized, I’ll go ahead and ask the question: Why are some of the most innovative companies on the planet still schlepping to Austin for SXSW to make their biggest announcements (Salt Lick and Stubbs BBQ’s aside)? The room vs. the world Looking at the numbers: Europe’s events spark more meaningful connections per square meter than anywhere else on Earth. 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Europe’s events sector processes roughly €108 billion, and is  extraordinarily efficient in bringing decision makers together in the same space.  European startups consistently struggle with what should be the easier bit: translating those promising conversations into sustained media coverage, investor attention and market validation. The great muppet caper Picture this scene playing out roughly 847 times per week across Europe: Monday: A Finnish startup leveraging AI presents a true breakthrough in supply chain management/optimization/operations to 200 logistics executives at a specialized track. The demo is genuinely impressive. The potential is genuinely massive. The audience is the very definition of target market. All the right pieces are in all the right places. Tuesday: Three tech publications publish brief summaries, perhaps even covering the entire conference, and not just the logistics breakthrough. The fledgling company’s LinkedIn post gets 47 likes (including the founders’ mothers, university mates, and the intern). A single podcast interview is scheduled for three weeks later. It may or may not happen. Wednesday: The story is now less alive than disco was on July 13, 1979. Look that one up, kids. Now let’s compare the same actions to the American playbook, which, if I’m honest, makes me simultaneously impressed and nauseous. The same company makes the announcement at a Bay Area-based event (yep, you know it as well as I do). It generates immediate response across a variety of channels from some  truly influential voices and some noise makers, but enough to garner the attention of major media (print, podcast, and pulp) outlets within 48 hours. It then spawns derivative content, and creates a sustained conversation that drives real, true, business development for the startup for weeks. The difference here isn’t the quality of the innovation; it’s how the messaging was amplified. Folks, you can hate me for saying this, but this is where Europe is getting schooled. There is no stopping in the Red Zone Take one look at today’s media landscape, and you’ll leave with a rather morbid impression. The problem isn’t structural fragmentation; it’s an endemic contraction. Leon may be growing, but European tech media is shrinking,  at precisely the wrong moment. A brief reminder: TechCrunch, long the go-to outlet for European startup coverage, quietly shut down its entire European operation in 2025 when private equity firm Regent LP acquired the publication.  Digital Frontier, the London-based tech publication that launched in early 2024 with a team of 20, “paused” operations just a few months ago, making all 16 staff members redundant.  Business Insider cut 21% of its staff in 2025, citing “extreme traffic drops” and AI disruption. Just days ago, we all found out that The Next Web, once one of Europe’s flagship tech conferences and media brands, was shutting down its events and media operations after nearly 20 years. The Financial Times, which bought TNW in 2019, confirmed it was winding down the business by the end of September following a “strategic review.” Conference attendance had dropped to 4,500 in 2025, less than half of pre-pandemic levels. The failure to capture content The folks at Black Unicorn PR earlier this year put together a guide that reveals something anyone working in European tech media already knows but pretends isn’t true: “Unlike the U.S., which has a few dominant tech media outlets and an emerging class of star indie writers, Europe hasn’t yet consolidated its practitioners’ knowledge in one place.” Stop and think about what that really means for a second. Sure, we’ve got strong regional players, and I salute Sifted, EU-Startups, and Tech.eu doing the do. But the lack of a unified amplification machinery, by definition, puts Europe at a disadvantage over Silicon Valley stories that are destined to be heard in Phuket faster than you can finish reading this sentence. To put it bluntly, European tech events suffer from content capture failure. The most valuable insights surface within conversations, at roundtable discussions, and networking sessions that generate no permanent content.  Unlike American events, which increasingly operate as content factories designed for social media amplification, European conferences optimize to create value in the room rather than post-event content distribution. All that

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Consumer 7 days ago

Walking through the sprawling halls of IFA Berlin 2025, it’s immediately clear that this isn’t just another trade show. This year’s edition solidified IFA Next as Europe’s premier showcase of consumer technology startups, an event where innovation meets practical applications in a comprehensive hardware-focused startup environment. The heart of European consumer tech innovation IFA Next has evolved into Europe’s hub for the latest on consumer tech. It’s where the continent’s most promising hardware startups converge with global visionaries and industry pioneers. This isn’t just marketing speak — Hall H25, dedicated entirely to consumer-focused hardware, was in many ways the largest and most influential gathering of consumer technology startups in Europe. The centerpiece was the Dream Stage, where bold ideas are shared through keynotes, panels, and highly anticipated pitch battles. Unlike other tech conferences, IFA Next maintains laser focus on technologies that will directly impact how people live, work, and interact with their environments. The Dream Stage is also where Europe’s next consumer tech unicorns are spotted far before they take flight. The finale of this year’s IFA Next Pitch Battle 2025: Breakthrough Battle saw founders presenting concepts to investors, media, and industry experts, competing for visibility, investment, and growth opportunities. Complementing the Dream Stage was the IFA Lab, an interactive testing ground where exhibitors, investors and industry  professionals collaborate to bring innovations from prototype to store shelves. The Lab is where Europe’s startups refined their ideas, engaged with industry experts, and pushed new technologies from concept to market reality. Hall H25: Europe’s consumer tech capital Hall H25 was home to what has become Europe’s largest dedicated consumer technology startup space. 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