AI-Palooza: Station F Unveils Its Future 40

Station F has become an AI hothouse.

Last week, the Paris-based startup campus announced its latest Future 40, a cohort of companies that are the top performers among the more than 1,000 startups at Station F. Of those: 34 were AI and machine learning startups.

The 2024 selection showcases a particularly strong focus on AI infrastructure and applications, reflecting broader industry trends toward building scalable AI solutions. This emphasis is evident in companies like Neuralk, Arago, and Koyeb, which are developing critical AI infrastructure to support the growing demand for computational resources.

The importance of AI in this year's cohort is further underscored by Meta's AI startup program at Station F, run in partnership with Hugging Face and Scaleway. Several AI-focused companies from this program, including Qevlar AI, Jimini AI, Pollen Robotics, and Neuralk AI, have earned spots in the Future 40.

The selected startups are applying AI across diverse sectors, from healthtech to cleantech. In healthcare, AI-powered solutions are leveraging improved access to quality health data and enhanced computing capabilities to deliver precise, scalable insights for diagnostics and personalized treatments.

Here is the full list of AI startups (with summaries from our deal coverage for those that have raised a round):

1. Altrove: this startup relies on AI to design alternatives to the critical but insecure materials needed to achieve carbon neutrality, bridging the gap between prediction and industrial application.
2. Arago: Arago creates a unique component to overcome both computing and memory limitations, by using a totally different medium: light. Arago was founded by a trio of AI researchers and physicists from École Polytechnique and MIT, backed by executives from leading AI and semiconductor companies, including Arm’s GM, Intel’s CTO, Hugging Face’s CSO, Apple’s VP, and others.
3. Bluco: Integrates AI into messaging apps to help companies fill open positions within a week by streamlining recruitment processes.
4. Biolevate: by harnessing the power of AI, this company transforms mountains of data into actionable information, accelerating the discovery of revolutionary treatments.
5. CarbonFarm: Pioneers satellite-verified carbon credits in agriculture, starting with rice, to unlock additional revenues for farmers adopting sustainable practices and assist corporations in reaching their net-zero goals.
6. CleanMob: CleanMob is a B2B car greentech startup revolutionizing automotive telematics by enabling companies to boost their vehicle fleets performances and productivity using connected cars data and cutting-edge virtual sensors technology.   
7. Corma: Corma has built an IT copilot that monitors, governs and automates your software licences & identities.
8. .txt (dottxt): this is the tool that makes large language models (LLMs) reliable enough for developers to easily design, run, deploy and evaluate LLM applications.
   
   📇 Company: Dottxt
   🔍 Description: A tool to make LLMs reliable enough for the world to build on. 💻 Website: https://dottxt.co/
   📍HQ City: Paris & San Francisco
   🧗 Round: Seed
   💰 Amount raised: $11.9 million
   🏦 Investors: Elaia, EQT Ventures, Seedcamp, Common Magic, Kima Ventures, Script Capital, STATION F and Business Angels incuding Roxanne VARZA, Julien Chaumond, Bob van Luijt, Erik Bernhardsson, Jean-Louis Quéguiner, Rick Lamers, and Pierre Valade.
   👨💼👩💼 Founders: CEO Rémi Louf, CTO Daniel Gerlanc, and Chief Science Officer Brandon T. Willard
   🗞️ News: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dottxt_we-are-proud-to-announce-our-119m-fundraise-activity-7252712312610918400-l9K_?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
   
9. .omics (Dotomics): this start-up seeks to develop customized plants that will meet the demands of a changing climate and evolving world, responding to critical societal challenges such as improving food security for a growing population and multiplying sustainable plant-derived medicines.
10. Drawbridge Labs: this startup is building the studio of the future based on a SaaS platform for computer-generated image (CGI) production to empower a new generation of content creators.
11. Entalpic: this company relies on AI to discover new chemical reactions to reduce CO2 emissions in the sectors that emit the most.
    
    What: Entalpic, a generative AI platform for the detection of molecules and materials for the chemical industry
    Why: To replace outdated industrial chemical processes and develop new solutions notably in the energy storage, fertilizer production, and pollution control sectors. Funding: €8.5 million
    Who: Co-Founders Mathieu Galtier, Victor Schmidt, Alexandre Duval
    Investors: Breega, Cathay Innovation, Felicis
    What's next: Already present in France, Germany & Canada, the funding will go towards powering the ML startup's next phase of growth by forging partnerships with key industry players and expanding into the US and Asia markets.
    
12. Exxa: this company is developing a platform to monitor the use of generative AI models and continuously identify tasks that can be optimized.
13. Formality: this start-up helps companies and their legal teams secure revenues and control expenses with its automatic contract monitoring platform.
    
    Seed Of The Week: https://frenchtechjournal.com/seed-of-the-week-formality/
    
14. Icono: AI-powered video search engine to easily find the shots you want, so as to simplify the work of video editors, journalists, brands and any content producer.
15. Jimini: AI-powered co-driver to help law firm professionals and in-house counsel with research, analysis and drafting, so as to automate most low-value-added tasks to enable legal professionals to focus on higher-value-added tasks.
16. Kelvin: B2B SaaS that generates home energy renovation plans.
    
    What: Kelvin, a SaaS specialized in creating home energy assessments using machine learning.
    Why: To improve energy efficiency audits.
    Funding: €5 million
    Who: Clémentine Lalande, Pierre Joly, and Guillaume Sempé
    Investors: Racine² (MGEN) Makesense, Serena, Seedcamp, Raise Capital, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures & several Business Angels
    What's next: The new funding will be used to develop new features and reach a hundred clients by 2025.
17. Koyeb: a solution that enables its customers to simplify the deployment and maintenance of applications and databases anywhere in the world, without having to manage complex infrastructures.
18. Leadbay: AI companion for B2B sales prospecting in the field, so as to continuously find new leads, predict results, rank current opportunities, detect performance trends and guide sales efforts towards the most promising opportunities.
19. Leanear: a company that enables organizations to secure multimodal AI solutions by protecting their data in the cloud beyond traditional perimeter security.
20. Neuralk-AI: startup that develops its own AI integration models specialized in the representation of structured data, enabling companies to create customized AI solutions that interact precisely with their own structured data.
21. Optimmo: online solution that accelerates energy renovation with cutting-edge technology enabling every property owner to benefit from the best renovation scenarios.
22. Orus Energy: energy flexibility software that enables consumers to automatically shift flexible loads (ventilation, heating, air conditioning, etc.) to off-peak hours, thereby supporting the balance and resilience of the electricity grid.
    
    What: Orus, AI-powered energy flexibility that enables commercial building operators to automatically shift flexible loads off carbon peak times, thereby supporting the balance and resilience of the grid in exchange for discounts on their energy bills.
    Why: The power grid is often strained to deliver new sources of alternative energy. Better management of the flow of energy could reduce demand and create more capacity.
    Funding: €2.2 million Pre-Seed
    Who: Co-Founders are CEO Alexandre Girard, COO Fanny Sauvée, and CTO Théophile Karila
    Investors: b2venture led the round with Asterion and participation from Ring Capital, plus Business Angels Pierre Trémolières (Accenta.ai) and Myriam Maestroni (e5t).
    What's Next: Orus Energy will use the funding to accelerate product development and expand features.
23. Pollen Robotics: this company develops open-source humanoid robots, designed for complex physical tasks to solve labor shortages in all sectors.
24. Presti: this startup helps furniture companies create product visuals with AI.
    
    What: Presti, GenAI for creating custom visuals around home furniture.
    Why: To save merchants the costs of pricey product shoots.
    Funding: €3.5 million (TechCrunch)
    Who: Saad Bencherif, Nabil Toumi, Hamza Bennis, and Abdellah Lamrani Alaoui
    Investors: Partech, and Business Angels including Thibaud Elziere, Maxime Brousse, Abou Laraki, Julien Hirth, and Remi Lemonnier
    What's Next: Presti launched its product in February and says it has consistently doubled its monthly revenue. The new funding will be used to expand marketing and product development.
25. Qevlar AI: B2B SaaS for cybersecurity operations teams to simplify their daily lives with its autonomous and explainable AI-powered alert investigations.
    
    What: Qevlar AI, a cybersecurity startup using proprietary AI to detect cyber attacks
    Why: To help businesses overcome smarter cyber threats.
    Funding: €4.5 million
    Who: Co-Founders Ahmed Achchak and Hamza Sayah
    Investors: EQT Ventures & Business Angels Olivier Pomel (Datadog), Mehdi Ghissassi (Google DeepMind), Florian Douetteau (Dataiku), Edouard Viot (GitGuardian) and Tarik Dadi (Qantev).
    What's Next: The startup will use the funds to engage in a recruitment drive and further develop its generative AI cybersecurity solution.
26. Raidium: this startup is dubbed the “GPT” of radiology with its approach to creating an imaging biomarker factory for clinical and research purposes, integrated into a native AI platform to address the complexities of precision medicine.
27. Rakoono: AI study companion in every student's pocket, generating quizzes aligned to upcoming deadlines, creating exercises based on students' passions and keeping parents up to date with weekly progress reports.
28. Rounded: a platform that enables any company to easily assemble, deploy and monitor AI voice agents on a large scale.
29. Steerlab: AI solution that helps pre-sales teams automate over 80% of their responses to RFPs, safety questionnaires and other supplier documents.
    
    What: Steerlab, an AI platform for presales teams.
    Why: To make life easier for presales teams by automating responses to requests for proposals (RFP) and vendor questionnaires.
    Funding: €1.7 million Who: Co-Founders Rami Iguerwane & Othmane Hamzaoui
    Investors: Dreamcraft VC, Heartfelt_, VC Lumière AI, and business angels What's next: The funding round will enable the startup to strengthen its AI platform, improve the efficiency of Presales and security teams by reducing response time by 80%, while helping them secure more deals.
30. Theremia: this biotech relies on AI to be able to adjust elements such as drug frequency, dosage and formulation to improve efficacy while significantly mitigating side effects.
    
    📇 Company: Theremia
    🔍 Description: AI-driven platform to design drug derivatives with improved efficacy and tolerability across diverse demographics.
    💻 Website: https://theremia.health/
    📍 HQ City: Paris
    🧗 Round: Seed
    💰 Amount raised: €3 million
    🏦 Investors: Eurazeo; Salica Investments; Entrepreneur First; Bpifrance; Business Angels
    👨💼👩💼 Founders: Iris Maréchal; Chloé Geoffroy
    🗞️ News: Paris-based Theremia secures €3 million to advance personalised medicine
    
31. Twelve: AI-based management software for dental practices.
32. Upstream: an email client designed for team collaboration. We add features like channels and task-tracking functionality on top of a typical email client, so that teams can have full context and transparency on all of their conversations, and make decisions more efficiently.
33. Vazy Data: AI data analysis co-driver that helps companies manage their decisions easily and quickly.
34. Veeton: AI platform that develops proprietary models to transform fashion imagery, enabling brands to create high-quality visuals quickly and at scale.
    
    What: Veeton, a generative AI model for creating life-like images.
    Why: To create product sheet visuals on fashion e-commerce sites, offering fashion brands an alternative to photo shoots.
    Funding: €2 million
    Who: Flore Lestrade, Christian Kotait, Tristan François
    Investors: Founders Future, Armilar Venture, Kima Ventures, business angels
    What's Next: The new money will be used to fuel development.

Here are the other 6:

1. COMIN: The first ride-hailing platform offering a fair, sustainable, and participative model, aiming to redefine urban mobility by empowering drivers and delivering affordable, eco-friendly rides to passengers.
2. Kulipa: Created a debit card issuer for crypto wallets, facilitating smooth and fast crypto payments wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted, and providing a white-label platform covering both technical and regulatory requirements of card payments.
3. Leasi: Revolutionizes consumer access to technology products by making it more flexible, economical, and environmentally friendly.
4. Moneco: A neobank for the French-speaking African diaspora in Europe, simplifying the process of opening a bank account with just a passport and offering a range of financial services, including French IBANs, international VISA cards, P2P transactions, wire transfers, and instant remittances to Africa.
5. Syntetica: Utilizes green chemistry to close the loop on synthetic textiles, starting with nylon, and has raised a €4.2 million seed round led by EQT Ventures. The team is collaborating with Victoria's Secret and ETAM to deliver 100% recycled nylon materials.
6. Twenty: A modern, powerful, and affordable open-source CRM platform for managing customer relationships, built around customer data and adaptable to unique workflows, designed to meet the evolving needs of fast-growing companies.