Every year, more than 1,000 startups join Station F, the iconic startup campus in Paris. As it can be hard to sift through 1,000 startup descriptions, Station F selects the 40 most promising startups and shares a list of what it calls the “Future 40”. The campus also invests in 10 of these startups (but never discloses that list).
The 10 startups it invests in participate in a program run by Station F itself or by a partner, such as Binance, LVMH, Meta and Microsoft.
Station F’s flagship program is the Founders Program. Companies apply to join this highly competitive accelerator program and be invited to workshops and classes to iterate rapidly on their projects and get to product-market fit as quickly as possible. Station F now takes a 1% equity stake in these startups.
But the startup campus also runs the Fighters Program, which is specifically designed for entrepreneurs with underprivileged backgrounds. It has also run vertical-specific programs in the past — such as the FemTech Program — when the Station F team believes startups in a specific vertical need additional support.
AI everywhere
Startups in this year’s batch have already raised €93 million to date (a hair less than $100 million). While entrepreneurs tackle a variety of sectors, 34 of the 40 startups are using artificial intelligence. It’s clear that every new startup going forward will incorporate AI in some way.
Looking at this year’s Future 40 startups, some names stand out of the selection — such as Arago, a startup working on new AI-focused chips that use optical technology at the chipset level to speed up operations. Or Exxa, a startup that’s optimizing AI inference to bring per-token rates down.
Expect to see more startups focused on optimizing AI workloads now that innovati …