Today, Meta announces the winners of the “European AI Startup Program”, an initiative to stimulate the European entrepreneurial ecosystem and shape the continent’s next wave of innovation.
Following the success of the first edition of the “AI Startup Program” in France, Meta has once again teamed up with Hugging Face, an open-source collaborative platform offering machine learning models and tools, and Scaleway, the European cloud leader for AI infrastructure, to support start-ups across Europe building using open-source models in their acceleration phase.
Following the call for applications, launched in June 2024, 5 winners were selected by a jury of experts:
- Batisia (France), the AI co-pilot for real estate development and construction professionals, which develops tailor-made solutions based on open-source AI to overcome productivity obstacles in the sector.
- Kodex AI (Germany), the AI-powered Compliance Manager of the future, which uses open-source AI fine-tuned on regulatory information to fully automate compliance tasks like regulatory analysis for financial institutions.
- Neuralk-AI (France), which develops AI integration models for structured data representation. The models are based on graphical neural networks that deliver unrivalled performance in similarity and search tasks for structured data sets, enabling companies to create any AI application they need to address real business needs.
- Vocal Image (Estonia), an AI-powered communication coach that helps users unlock their full speaking potential through guided voice lessons, personalised AI feedback, and interactive vocal challenges.
- Pruna (France/Germany), the AI Optimization Engine for ML teams seeking to simplify scalable inference. By compressing models using single or combined methods on any hardware, it balances size, speed, and performance to deliver cost-effective and greener deployments for every use case.
The program, supported by the HEC Paris incubator, allows European start-ups to benefit from the resources available at STATION F, the world’s largest start-up campus. From October 2024 to February 2025, the 5 winners will benefit from technical mentoring by researchers at FAIR, Meta’s artificial intelligence research laboratory, access to Hugging Face’s platform and tools, and Scaleway’s computing power to develop their businesses based on building blocks of open-source AI.
“For over 10 years, Meta has been at the forefront of open-source. We are convinced open-source is a key driver of innovation, in Europe and around the world. We remain committed to the growth and success of the next generation of open-source innovators through our AI accelerator programme for startups across the continent. With over 150 applicants across 20 countries, we look forward to returning to Station F in Paris to run a programme designed to bring the economic and technological benefits of open-source models to the entire European ecosystem.” – Markus Reinisch, Vice President for Public Policy in Europe, Meta.
“Hugging Face’s longstanding and successful collaboration with Meta, STATION F and Scaleway to bring the benefits of open-source AI to all, from builders to first-time startups and larger companies, is what this program is all about! We’re excited to continue supporting the 5 exceptional winners of this year’s cohort and continue pushing for open innovation.” – Clément Delangue, CEO and co-founder of Hugging Face.
“Scaleway is delighted to support this latest edition of the AI Startup Program. The five selected startups will benefit from the European cloud’s greatest AI compute power, via our European-based GPU clusters. I can’t think of a better way to drive the emergence of our continent’s next generation AI champions, and look forward to seeing these promising startups’ groundbreaking AI innovations.” – Damien Lucas, CEO, Scaleway.
“Of the 30 programs we have at STATION F, the Meta AI Startup Accelerator with Hugging Face and Scaleway is one of the most sought-after on campus and one of the leading programs on the continent. We are thrilled to welcome these 5 startups, which are set to become AI leaders in Europe and globally.”- Roxanne Varza, Director of Station F.
More information about Meta AI here: https://ai.meta.com/research/