Focus on the winners of the French-speaking Village pitch session: the 15 best AI solutions

16 juillet 2021

The 2021 edition of the Viva Technology (VivaTech) trade show, which took place from 16 to 19 June 2021, saw the launch of the Artificial Intelligence Technology Collective of the Francophone Village: an initiative coordinated by Isabelle Galy. During the Pitch Session: “The 15 best AI solutions”, several start-ups and companies presented their AI projects. ActuIA offers you a focus on the winners.

A competition as part of the launch of the international francophone AI collective

During this fifth edition of VivaTech, the IA collective of the French-speaking village was inaugurated. On June 16, 2021, from 5:20 pm to 6:20 pm, a pitch session around the best AI solutions of the collective took place. Fifteen start-ups took turns to present their innovative tools using artificial intelligence and its many branches, including: nodeus solutions, SkalUP, acapela, verteego, HighWind, Activus Group, yzr, Asets-Lux, Prologue, Mediamap, elqano, Fentech, itdm and Peevee.

Each of these structures had about 90 seconds to present their latest innovation and convince a jury of experts to choose them as the winner of the best solution of the French-speaking village’s AI technology collective. Here is the list of the forty or so expert jurors who awarded the prizes in this competition by scoring each of the proposed services and tools out of 20:

Isabelle Galy, from Cluster IA, as general coordinator of the collective
Claudio Truzzi, from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, digital innovation expert
Brigitte Doucet, from Regional-IT, journalist
Xavier Fresquet, from Sorbonne University, deputy director of the Sorbonne Center for AI
Romain Vidal, from VDL Group, Founder and CEO of the firm
Pascal Condamine, from Scaleway, head of start-up programs
Maxime Sabahec, from Scaleway, start-up program manager
Thierry Soulier, from dblog, CEO
Arnaud Magnin, Sorbonne University
Michel Bricteux, from Digital Wallonia International Hub | Montréal, economic and commercial advisor
Alain Lavoie, from Lexrockai, CEO
Stéphan Ernst, from Awex, Senior Digital Economy Specialist
Sebastien Morant, from Engine, Director
Adrien Fenech, from Estimeo, founder of the firm
Justin Dammann, from Euratechnologies, start-up manager
Pauline Brunel, from Blackfin, investment manager
Laurence Joly, from Fabrique du futur, partner
Fariha Shah, from Golden Bees, co-founder of the firm
Stéphane Py, of B2BAD, founder of the firm
Benoir Macq, from UC Louvain, trail institute
Rugamba Raoul, of Place de l’hôtel de ville, founder of the firm
Antoine Jeanjean, from Digital Aquitaine, Domex IA Data science
Julie Degallaix, of Coaching4u, founder of the firm
Frédéric Carbonnelle, of MIC ASBL, developer evangelist
Charles Robert, of Défi Montréal, coordinator
Richard Pawlowsky, of Media Universel, founder and director of the firm
Mathieu Barreau, columnist and IA podcaster
Vincent Richet, of La Coque (by VF Events), CEO
Franck Araujo, of Accélérateur M, managing director
Vincent Maret, from Bouygues, open innovation corporate director
Eric Labelle, from the National Bank of Canada, senior director, start-up
Bruno Cambounet, Sopra Banking Software, Director
Philippe Sajhau, IRM, Vice President, Metropolis
Johanna Diaz, Actu IA, Editor-in-Chief
Dobah Carre, from Prudence AI, lawyer and CEO
Vincent Vigié, from Ad’Occ, ICT project manager
Thierry Hamon, from the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, smart city IT service manager
Laetitia Biciacci, from Provence promotion invest in Provence, manager of innovation and prospection
Frédéric Boce, from Prompt, general manager

After an hour, four startups stood out: Prologue AI (with 12.15/20), Peevee (with 12.25/20), yzr (with 13.30/20) and Fentech (with 15.79/20).

Fentech, yzr, Peevee, Prologue AI: the four winners of the pitch “The 15 best AI solutions”

Below, find a presentation of the four structures that were awarded during the pitch session “The 15 best AI solutions”:

First place – Fentech: Fentech is a deeptech start-up specialized in artificial intelligence. Founded in 2018 by Moussab Djerrab and Fayçal Djerrab, the company supports its clients in the AI transformation, implementation and development of AI solutions with the mission of making clients’ business profitable and helping them make the best decisions.
Its DSales solution: In order to support retailers who have been suffering the full force of the COVID-19 health crisis for over a year, Fentech has developed DSales, an intelligent sales forecasting solution. This Software-as-a-Solution connects to the data stream and automatically generates the best action plans. The machine learning algorithms developed by the start-up (and more specifically thanks to the Clairvoyant algorithm) aim to guarantee reliable forecasts and improve the profitability of stores by making gains on stocks, prices and new product launches.

Second place – yzr: this start-up specialises in automating data interoperability using artificial intelligence. Founded by Sébastien Garcien and Jean-Philippe Poisson, this start-up raised €2 million in early 2021 from Frédéric Mazzella, Anne-Laure Constanza, Bertrand Diard, Jean-Baptiste Rudelle and Laurent Ritter, with the aim of standardising data.
Its solution yzr: With the goal of automating data interoperability between heterogeneous sources through automatic natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, yzr launches its solution. It can be used to automate the standardization of supplier flows for retail or marketplaces, to accelerate the integration of a product catalog into a Product Information Management system or to clean and standardize a B2B customer database.

Third place – Peevee: Peevee is a start-up with a team of experts in machine learning, software development and support that develops a multilingual virtual agent that makes life easier for technicians and users. Based in Nantes, it is sponsored and supported by Experis, a Manpower group brand.
Its solution Powee: this tool is an intelligent virtual agent that is able to converse with you and answer your daily problems in the field of IT support. It aims to transform IT support by bringing a new experience to end users.

Fourth place – Prologue AI: this is a digital studio made up of Clios and AIXprize winning craftsmen, creating digital entertainment experiences through artificial intelligence. Founded by Jonathan Rouxel and Edouard Ferron Mallett in 2019, the Montreal-based startup aims to be innovative and creative in the world of AI and says it wants to become “the Netflix of location-based immersive content” with its latest solution.
Its VoiceTrip solution: Prologue is creating VoiceTrip, a platform designed to foster the discovery of entertainment content through immersive experiences at the intersection of video games and tourism. Entertainment enthusiasts can access content from around the globe by purchasing experiences that combine video games, mixed reality and spatialized audio through a vast catalog of journeys.

Translated from Focus sur les gagnants de la session de pitch du Village Francophone : les 15 meilleures solutions IA