Spotlight Interview: CEA-Leti Director Jean-René Lèquepeys

Over the past two decades, the French city of Grenoble has quietly emerged as one of Europe’s major Deep Tech Hubs. In 2023, Grenoble ranked fourth among all European cities for Deep Tech VC investments thanks to deals like the €2bn in financing raised by battery startup Verkor, $120m for Aledia’s micro screen tech, and $20m for GreenWaves’ fabless semiconductor.

An essential element of this success is Grenoble’s rich base of research institutions as well as a wealth of local industrial and microelectronic companies. Even more important, however, is the deep ties that link research and commercialization. 

One of the institutions at the core of Grenoble’s Deep Tech economy is CEA-Leti, part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives or CEA). To understand its role, I spoke with Jean-René Lèquepeys, Vice-President and Director of Programs for CEA-Leti.

​Prior to his appointment in 2019, Lèquepeys had a 30-year history with CEA, both as a researcher in image processing and as the catalyst for launching a number of research departments focused on telecom, circuit design, and embedded software. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Q: What is CEA-Leti’s mission?

Jean-René Lèquepeys: CEA-Leti is an institute devoted to microelectronics and nanoelectronics with 2,000 people. So it's a big entity. It’s 10% of CEA. We have a robust budget of €450 million. A huge part of our revenues comes from industry and some institutional entities. We are there to make research activities, and to transfer the results of research activities to industry. Our model is lab to fab. We develop jointly with our partners inside our cleanrooms or on the premises of industrial companies.