Paris, June 2, 2021 - VivaTech is back this year, from June 16th to 19th, with a first-of-its-kind program. Renowned speakers, important initiatives and also new innovations over four days will set the pace for the first hybrid event on this scale to take place in the last 18 months. Saturday will be reserved for the general public, with activities and experiences as fun as they are spectacular, to be enjoyed on the grounds of the Porte de Versailles exhibition center. Four inspiring days, packed with opportunities for business and with flashes of innovation, to contribute to this long-awaited moment of recovery and reconnection.

This year, more than 1,100 exhibitors are expected, the majority of them in-person at Porte de Versailles in Paris. VivaTech’s founding partners BNP Paribas, Google, La Poste, LVMH and Orange, but also EDF, EY, Huawei, ManpowerGroup, Microsoft, Renault Group’s Mobilize brand, RATP Group, Sanofi, Salesforce, Air Liquide, Clear Channel, Dassault Systèmes, Engie, Facebook, Groupe 
Bouygues, HPE, Klaxoon, KPMG, McKinsey & Company,  Ministry of the Armed Forces (France), Ile de 
France region (France), Occitanie region (France), Sud region (France), Royal Canin, Swisstech, Veolia and many others are renewing their confidence in Viva Technology by choosing this year’s event to reveal their innovations to the world and to share their vision of their transformation. VivaTech continues to play a pivotal role as a business accelerator linking the different stakeholders of the international tech ecosystem, for more qualitative and inclusive growth.
 

Inspiring top-level speakers

Once again, major players in technology and business will take the floor this year at VivaTech. This fifth edition will be highlighted by the participation of Tim Cook (CEO - Apple), Eric S. Yuan (fondateur & CEO - Zoom), Mark Zuckerberg,  (Founder & CEO - Facebook), Thomas Kurian (CEO - Google Cloud), Thierry Breton (European Commissioner for Internal Market), Peggy Johnson (CEO - Magic Leap), Stéphane Richard (Chairman & CEO - Orange), Arvind Krishna (Chairman & CEO - IBM), Ken Hu, (Deputy Chairman - Huawei), Brad Smith (President - Microsoft),  Marguerite Bérard (Head of French Retail Banking - BNP Paribas), Dan Schulman (CEO - PayPal), Bernard Arnault (Chairman & CEO - LVMH), Sébastien Missoffe (Managing Director & VP France - Google France), Thibaud Hug de Larauze (Co-Founder & CEO - Back Market), Mitchell Baker (CEO - Mozilla Corporation & Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation), Jonathan Cherki (Founder & CEO - ContentSquare), Sonali de Rycker (Partner - Accel), Niklas Zennstrom (Managing Director - Atomico), Sandeep Mathrani (CEO - WeWork), Boris Winkelmann, (CEO DPD - Groupe La Poste), Nick Clegg (VP of Global Affairs - Facebook), Aurélie Jean (Founder & CEO - InSilicoVeritas), Marie Barbesol (co-Founder - Klaxoon) and many others (complete list here).
 

More than 500 Innovations responding to major societal challenges
 More than 500 innovations, 15 launches or world premieres, and more than 100 3D/AR models for this hybrid edition of VivaTech, with a particular emphasis on impact technologies:
 

● Tech for the environment 

Ehang, a Chinese startup, will present the first autonomous and electric air taxi (eVTOL). Already on the market, this new means of travel takes personal mobility into a new dimension.

Cueillette urbaine, a French startup selected as one of the 1,000 solutions approved by Solar Impulse, designs, installs and operates vegetable-growing areas on rooftops, on terraces, in courtyards... They use aeroponics, an above-ground cultivation method that uses 90% less water than traditional agriculture, in a reduced space and with up to 10 times greater yields.

EZ-1: Just unveiled, the EZ-1 Prototype belongs to the car-sharing category. It is the very first urban solution from the Renault Group's new Mobilize brand, intended for shared use and available for rental.
 

● Tech for society

Hable, a smart controller connected by Bluetooth that allows blind people to interact with their smartphone, working towards a more inclusive digital world.

ExactCure, a startup supported by Huawei, offers a personalized solution for the proper use of medication. Specifically, the digital twin of a patient simulates the concentration of medication in his or her blood according to characteristics such as age, gender, liver condition, etc.

Life Plus, hosted by the BNP Paribas Lab, helps professionals working with the elderly to prevent frailty through connected assistance and remote medical monitoring solutions. Life Plus measures in real time a user's activity and health parameters (heart rate and oxygen saturation), detects falls or moments of abnormal inactivity and sends an alert to family and friends or to the remote assistance center.

Geointelligence des territoires. With this solution, La Poste (the French Post Office) can measure the heat loss of buildings using sensors placed on letter carriers' vehicles during their rounds and then draw up a precise map. 
 

● Tech to watch

Sense Glove: Haptic gloves that make training and professional situations more realistic through virtual reality. They can be used for learning real-situation tasks at a lower cost and with less risk. Next Modular is developing tests for electric (soon to be autonomous) and modular vehicles. These "buses" of the future can be detached or assembled in motion to optimize vehicle capacity, travel fluidity and transport costs. Tests have already been carried out in Dubai, and logistics solutions are currently being developed.
 

● Future of work

Microsoft Mesh enables presence and shared experiences from anywhere – on any device – through mixed-reality apps.

Experis Career Accelerator by ManpowerGroup, the career transition GPS, designed in partnership with corporations, staffing firms and governments to help workers make faster, smarter and more successful career transitions in the age of automation.

Also worth noting is the creation of virtual showrooms and immersive experiences accessible from VivaTech's digital platform:

● The Discovery Showroom dedicated to the low-carbon transition, by EDF

● The Robot Tech Showroom, by EDF

● The Pet Health Tech Showroom, by Royal Canin

● The 5G Tech Showroom, by Ericsson

● The Space Tech Showroom, by Arianespace

● The Construction Tech Showroom, by Bouygues Construction

● The Mobility Showroom

● The Sustainability Showroom

● The Immersive 5G Lab, by Orange: A unique immersive experience to show what 5G is about to do to positively transform our lives, from healthcare to gaming, from entertainment to industry, from smart cities to new forms of mobility.
 

New highlights and new initiatives

Viva Technology has completely redesigned its program in order to respond to the various challenges in our societies. Several new initiatives will take place over the four days of the event:

● The Equality Lounge, with Salesforce, promotes gender equality in the tech industry through women-in-tech meetups, and diversity through interactive sessions and corporate equality programs. 

● +50 impact partnerships: Organizations, associations and professional networks will come together during VivaTech around issues such as support structures for young people, inclusion, and social entrepreneurship. Among these are Sista, 50inTech, Willa, Social Builder, Diversidays, Black Girls Code, Women in Africa, Ashoka, Le Collectif Mentorat, and L’Escalator.

● For the third consecutive year, VivaTech, in partnership with 50inTech and with the support of Axa, Clear Channel, Salesforce and Société Générale, is launching the Female Founder Challenge (FFC) with two main objectives: to facilitate meetings between VCs and startups in order to accelerate the funding of startups led by women; and to encourage VC funds to commit to more gender equality at all levels.

● In the continuation of the Top 100 European Scale-Ups, produced in partnership with GP Bullhound and with the support of the European Innovation Council, VivaTech will reward six startups through the Next Unicorn Awards, in five categories by sector of activity (Fintech and Insurtech; Marketplaces; Enterprise SaaS; Digital Media; and AI, Deep Tech and Big Data) as well as a jury favorite.

● Scale-Up Europe: This initiative, which brings together more than 150 founders of scale-ups, investors, researchers, business leaders and institutions, has developed a series of recommendations over the past few months to accelerate the emergence of European technology champions. The members of Scale-up Europe will present their recommendations to French President Emmanuel Macron during VivaTech.

● Startup Challenge with UNESCO: VivaTech engages with UNESCO by bringing its expertise in open innovation and collaboration with startups to address three major challenges related to artificial intelligence: Using AI to preserve biodiversity; tackling gender bias in AI; and accessing information in low-resource languages by breaking down the language barrier through data and AI.

● For its 5th edition, the LVMH Innovation Award will distinguish the most innovative projects. 

Twenty-eight finalists have been shortlisted: six startups from six categories will be honored. One of them will receive the 2021 LVMH Innovation Award.

● A series of inspiring and unique talks, presented online by Google on topics as varied as data governance, diversity, industry 4.0 or the future of retail.
 

Finally, the winners of the many other challenges organized by various Viva Technology partners will also be announced. These challenges are real high points for the selected startups and encourage the creation of lasting business links between emerging businesses and established companies.

Saturday, June 19: A program for the general public on major social issues

VivaTech opens its doors to the general public on Saturday, June 19, with three sessions of three hours each: 9am-12pm / 12pm-3pm / 3pm-6pm.

Innovations, experiences and topical discussions will set the pace for the day.  Inspiring speakers, influencers and entrepreneurs, among them André Manoukian, Bastien Oggeri (co-founder of Innovafeed) and Philippine Dolbeau (founder of Newschool), will debate in French on current affairs (diversity and inclusion, environment, city of the future, education, sport and innovation, music & tech, tech for well-being, future of food...) There will be activities throughout the day: 
 

● Mega Women & Girls in Tech will also be launched at VivaTech this year. This is the largest intergenerational collective of women and girls in tech, initiated by Simplon, BNP Paribas and Digital Ladies & Allies to promote existing career paths and to increase the number of women in the sector.

● Prep'Apprentissage: Openclassrooms' online training will be at the heart of a program of meetings between young people and VivaTech's partner companies, which are committed to reserving trainee positions for them as of the beginning of the next school year.

● Coaching Youth: L'Escalator, EFAP and EY are joining forces during VivaTech to help young people find employment. 30-minute speed coaching sessions will be offered to 100 young people by volunteer coaches from our partner companies and startups.

● A Chance For Every Young Person: The civictech platform Make.org will present the results of the Grande Cause initiative, "How to give every young person a chance?", launched in 2018 at VivaTech with Accor, Google, BNP Paribas and PwC. Workshops will be held at the BNP Paribas Lab to move from experimental work to scale.

● Next Startupper Challenge with French Founders: Launched in 2019, this inter-school and inter-university challenge aims to promote entrepreneurship among students, to highlight their creativity and agility in these times of crisis, and more concretely to allow them to test and boost their projects with professionals. This year, the theme "Tech for Good / Impact Project" will be the focus. 
 

Saturday will also be an opportunity to present several artistic and immersive digital experiences:

● CADAF will be participating in Digital Art Month and will present various works by leading digital artists. 

● With the support of BNP Paribas, the "Les ailleurs" festival will take the opportunity in association with Fisheye and the Gaîté Lyrique to present works in virtual reality. 

● The Creative Motion studio will offer the public a unique visual and sensory experience that is totally immersive.

Finally, VivaTech will play the entertainment card with several participatory events:

● An eFoot tournament

● A Cosplay parade

● Lightsaber combat demonstrations (training sessions will be offered in the afternoon)