Day Two at VivaTech's ninth edition has officially come to a close. Come with us to take a look at the highlights of today!
AI-Powered Drug Innovation: From Discovery to Development
In this session, Nina Mian, Executive Director at AstraZeneca, Mathilda Strom, Founding COO at Bioptimus, Nicolas Lopez Carranza, Head of BioAI AVAC at Instadeep, and Jacky Abitbol, Managing Partner at Cathay Innovation, discussed AI's role in drug innovation.
The traditional drug discovery and development process is lengthy, costly, and uncertain. Today, artificial intelligence is revolutionizing this paradigm by significantly accelerating timelines from target identification to clinical trials. Since COVID, and with a growing acceleration since 2023, AI has reshaped pharmaceutical companies, transforming drug development into a faster, more efficient process. AI enables sophisticated biological modeling, optimizing drug candidate selection and development pathways.
At AstraZeneca, AI accelerates discovery by integrating pathology, imaging, and real-world data to create clinical decision support tools, particularly in oncology. AI helps detect disease signals earlier and refines patient selection for trials, making treatments safer and more effective. Ensuring diversity in clinical trial populations is critical for developing therapies that work across different demographics, promoting ethical and equitable medical innovation.
Startups like Instadeep and Bioptimus are advancing foundational AI models capable of simulating biology at multiple scales, from cells to tissues to patients. AI-designed drugs have demonstrated notably higher success rates in early clinical trials compared to traditional drugs (up to 90% versus 50-70%), improving both efficiency and accuracy.
“In the pharmaceutical industry, AI will not replace humans anytime soon, but maybe a human using AI will displace humans, so competition will be tough,” Lopez Carranza said.
Ethical considerations and regulation remain key priorities. Companies like AstraZeneca are pioneering transparent AI governance to build trust and ensure compliance. Investors recognize the transformative potential of AI in pharma, fueling increased partnerships and funding. Ultimately, AI promises faster, more precise drug development with scalable, patient-centric approaches that could redefine medicine’s future.
“AI enables us to do things much faster, at much wider scale, uncovering insights that weren’t possible before,” Strom concluded.
How Can Tech Help Us Preserve the Natural Environment?
In this session, leaders from Whale Seeker, Restor, the European Environment Agency, and the Pacific Community SPC explored how emerging technologies are turning raw data into impactful decisions for the planet.
Karl Hamilton, Head of the Digital Department at the European Environment Agency, set the tone by emphasizing the importance of regular, high-quality data in supporting EU environmental assessments and policymaking. “The role of technology is helping us generate data, to have much more regular information on the state of the environment in order to take action and inform policymakers and citizens,” he noted.
In the Pacific Islands, the stakes are existential. Stuart Minchin, Director General of the Pacific Community SPC, spoke passionately about climate threats in the region. “The Pacific is a third of the planet, only 2% land and islands… Tuvalu is going to be the first country to disappear off the map due to rising sea levels.” His team’s tool, Digital Earth Pacific, processes over 800 terabytes of satellite data to track coastal erosion and sea-level changes across every island in the Pacific. But the real breakthrough, he stressed, is translating that massive dataset into “decision-ready products” that policymakers can act on.
While big data is critical, some argue we already have enough to make decisions and that what’s lacking is action. Thomas Elliot, CEO of Restor, put it plainly: “Today we have enough data to make decisions that aren’t being made. There’s enough information to allow investment to flow into communities that are protecting and restoring the planet.” Restor’s mission is to better represent the complexity of nature by integrating data into frameworks that resonate across sectors.
For the marine world, Emily Charry Tissier, CEO and Co-founder of Whale Seeker, highlighted the vast data gaps in ocean ecosystems. She called for scalable systems to acquire, interpret, and retain marine data, especially by breaking down silos and unlocking private-sector datasets. Building trust in the data and tools is also vital. Both Charry Tissier and Hamilton pointed to the need for robust quality standards to ensure confidence and credibility in environmental decisions.
The panelists agreed: the challenge is not information scarcity, but how to make environmental data actionable, trustworthy, and transformative.
Scaling with Vision: Resilience, Reinvention, and the Future of AI
Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart, on the verge of joining Open AI as CEO of applications, is one of the top French figures in tech right now. She joined Instacart in 2021, just after the pandemic, and turned the food delivery company into a tech company.
Simo, joining remotely, introduced “the shopping cart of the future”, enhanced by AI and computer vision, that enables customers to have a richer experience inside the supermarket by giving them personalized recommendations and showing them discounts. “Customers do not want a store totally devoid of people, they want human activity, AI is just an enhancement that augments human labour and makes shopping more enjoyable.”
Concerning the balance between automation and human labour, Simo explained how she introduced AI in Instacart: “Team by team, we asked the leaders what the most repetitive tasks were in their department, to identify where AI could be useful. Now, in IT, 87% of our code is AI assisted.” She also underlined the importance of training people to accelerate AI adoption.
At Open AI, Simo’s team will be in charge “of taking the incredible research breakthroughs that the company generates to distribute them to society, making it available to all.” According to Simo, Open AI is a company that revolutionize people’s lives. “AI should change lives for everyone... In the future, every person should have multiple agents and a team of agents at their service to help them.”
Harnessing the Tides: Innovation at the Ocean’s Edge
Bernt Erik Westre, CTO of Minesto, introduced the company’s innovative tidal energy technology, which harnesses predictable ocean currents for sustainable power generation. “The tidal power is like clockwork, it’s very predictable compared to solar, wind energy.”
Founded in 2007 as a spin-off from Swedish aerospace company Saab, Minesto develops the “dragon kite”—a small, underwater kite that moves at high speeds (15-16 knots) to generate electricity efficiently, even in low-flow waters.
The “dragon kite” operates roughly 80 meters below the surface, producing up to 1.2 megawatts per device. Unlike traditional tidal turbines, Minesto’s system is lighter, more compact, and suited for slower currents, significantly expanding its potential market—estimated at 1.5 times the size of current nuclear energy markets.
Minesto’s flagship operational site is in the Faroe Islands, which aims to become 100% renewable by 2030. The tidal energy produced is highly predictable, making it a reliable complement to intermittent sources like solar and wind. The technology has minimal environmental impact, avoiding interference with shipping and marine life, supported by extensive studies since 2012.
Though the Faroe Islands represent a unique use case due to their small population and grid size, Minesto envisions broader applications in small coastal communities worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia. Minesto is no longer a concept but a mature, commercially deployed technology, contributing to the renewable energy transition.
New Worlds, New Markets: The Future of Space is Now
In this session, Vanessa Wyche, Acting Associate Administrator at NASA, Jean-Marc Astorg of CNES, and Hélène Huby, CEO of The Exploration Company, discussed the future of space.
Space exploration has long been an international endeavor, and more recent history has seen the growth of the commercial space sector across the globe. Ambitious space exploration missions and opportunities foster innovative technologies through partnerships across multiple sectors.
Vanessa Wyche explained that NASA is focused on expanding its capabilities through partnerships:
- Public-private collaboration has helped companies like SpaceX and Northrop Grumman deliver cargo to the ISS.
- NASA now purchases services rather than building all hardware internally, allowing it to focus on innovation and exploration. “It empowers industry to innovate, and it lowers costs, too.”
- Plans include commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) destinations post-ISS and the Artemis missions to the Moon and Mars.
Astorg highlighted that space is strategic, economic, scientific, and inspirational, reminding the audience that “every smartphone today relies on about 50 satellites.”
Huby announced the imminent launch of Europe’s first privately funded capsule, fueled by 300 million euros in capital. She stressed that space is not just about exploration but about solving problems on Earth—pointing to ISS-based water recycling and future energy storage systems developed for the Moon.
NASA and CNES both praised the market-driven approach now being adopted in Europe, with CNES transitioning from infrastructure-building to service procurement. “Exploration is part of who we are,” said Huby, calling for a new global project that includes the U.S., Europe, and China. Astorg added that space must become an industrial sector like automotive—scalable and efficient.
"For our startups and entrepreneurs, there are many challenges. There are also practical applications here on Earth. I’d like to invite you to visit nasa.gov/architecture-moon-to-mars. There, you'll find the areas we've identified as critical gaps for deep space exploration".
Challenge & Award Winners
For the first time this year, the event introduced a Global Awards Ceremony, sponsored by TechCrunch, to unveil the winners of VivaTech's top five startup awards and challenges. Let's walk through the winners this year.
Female Founder's Challenge: Hélène Briand, Co-Founder & CTO, Verley
Africa Tech Awards (Grand Winner): REME-D
GreenTech: Plentify HealthTech: REME-D FinTech & eCommerce: Zeeh Africa
Tech for Change: Genesis
Next Startupper Challenge: Greeny Solutions by Zied Madini
Innovation of the Year Award: Chipiron
See You Tomorrow
We'll be back at it again tomorrow for another B2B day. Follow the latest announcements and highlights on Instagram, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn!
