Paris will again become the center of innovation and technology next week, as the 2025 edition of Viva Technology takes place from June 11–14 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. VivaTech has become the largest technology and innovation event in Europe, with 160,000 delegates — including many C-level executives, over 13,000 startups, and 3,000-plus investors — attending from all over the world.
The lineup of speakers this year is again quite impressive, featuring Jensen Huang (NVIDIA’s CEO), Joe Tsai (cofounder and chairman of Alibaba), Arthur Mensch (CEO of Mistral AI), Yann LeCun (VP and chief AI scientist at Meta), Mike Krieger (Anthropic’s chief product officer), and Thomas Dohmke (CEO of GitHub) but also CEOs of large firms such as LVMH, L’Oréal, Sanofi, Instacart, Verizon, and many more!
I have been attending VivaTech since the beginning, and it is fascinating to see how the event has evolved since the first edition in 2016. If you read my previous blogs from 2018, 2022, or 2024, you really get a sense of the technology evolution.
Only a few months after Paris hosted the AI Action Summit, there is no doubt that AI will continue to be front and center. Hopefully, the discussion will focus on the strategic value of the technology and how business leaders can help their organizations make the most of the AI opportunity. Business leadership of AI strategy is a weak spot for most organizations. According to Forrester’s State Of AI Survey, 2024:
Fewer than a quarter of CEOs are directly responsible for the AI business strategy (just 21% in North America versus 16% in Europe).
In more than two-thirds of firms, the technology function (CIOs/CTOs and their teams) — not the business function — is leading AI efforts across the organization (63% in North America and 71% in Europe).
Beyond leadership, there is still a huge cultural and skills gap for organizations to make the most of the latest AI developments.
I don’t expect key announcements but mostly debates on the economic, political, societal, and environmental impact of technology innovation. VivaTech is more often than not an opportunity to showcase how large groups innovate with startups and to get a glimpse of the latest technology innovations, especially on deep tech (including cybersecurity and defense tech) and climate tech. VivaTech recently released a list of the top 100 rising European startups.
Image source: Viva Technology
Personally, I will pay stronger attention to some of the climate tech players such as 1Komma5° (electrification of buildings), UrbanChain (decentralized energy networks), and Treefera (decarbonization solutions).
Interestingly, among the French Tech Next40/120 Class of 2025 that the French government just announced, 29 players are categorized in the green tech/agritech sector, including players such as Chargemap, Electra, ElicitPlant, Energy Pool, FAIRMAT, GravitHy, Metron, TSE, and Voltalis.
Many of the startups in attendance will hope to attract new funding and reach unicorn status. Unfortunately, there is still too much hype and fascination around unicorns. Don’t get me wrong: Financing innovation matters, but it is not the panacea. While funding the next generation of green tech will help, technology innovation alone will certainly not be enough to live within the nine planetary boundaries. Low-tech solutions, frugal innovation, regulation, new business models, evolving consumer behaviors, and mindset change among C-leaders are all even more critical.
I’ll be at the event and look forward to meeting many of you there! If you’re a Forrester client, please feel free to contact your account team to set up a meeting or arrange a conversation with me.
