At VivaTech 2026, Orange organized its startup challenge around a strategic topic: “Responsible AI, tangible value.” In line with its Trust the Future strategy, this initiative reflects Orange’s ambition to make open innovation a driver of growth, trust and concrete transformation. It also demonstrates the Group’s commitment to working with startups and partners to bring forward useful, responsible solutions that can be directly applied to major market challenges.
More than 200 applications reviewed: 5 startups awarded
As Hervé Naudin, Orange Fab program Manager, and Laurent Geoffroy, Marketing Intelligence and Open Innovation Director, recalled during the ceremony, this challenge is part of a broader effort launched several months ago to identify the startups most relevant to Orange’s priorities: security, home experience, and intelligence applied to business and industry. The goal is not only to recognize promising technologies, but also to identify solutions capable of creating value, integrating into our offers, and generating new market opportunities.
This year, more than 200 applications were reviewed. Five startups were awarded for the strength of their approach, the relevance of their market, and their ability to address very concrete challenges.
Sonaid
Sonaid, (opens in a new window) a French company, was recognized in the Home Experience category for addressing a simple yet essential need: helping protect people at home more effectively. Its technology, an audio AI embedded directly into connected devices, analyzes critical sounds — distress, verbal abuse, abnormal situations — without sending data to the cloud. The solution combines security, privacy and local intelligence, three dimensions that are particularly aligned with Orange’s vision of trust and digital sobriety.
CryptoNext
In the Cybersecurity & Quantum category, CryptoNext (opens in a new window), a French company, addresses a fundamental challenge: preparing organizations for the post-quantum era. By helping businesses map their cryptographic usage and migrate to algorithms resistant to future quantum computers, the startup protects what is now the foundation of digital trust: data, exchanges, payments and infrastructures. This is a key capability for a Group like Orange, for which digital trust is at the heart of its offers and infrastructures. This valuable expertise paves the way for more robust, more secure and more sustainable services.
AIM Intelligence
Also in the Cybersecurity & Quantum category, AIM Intelligence (opens in a new window), a Korean company, stands out for its very concrete approach to AI security. As AI agents increasingly make decisions and carry out actions within enterprise systems, the startup provides a direct answer to an emerging challenge: securing AI agents before they become an operational risk. Its technology tests AI system vulnerabilities, applies guardrails and supervises agents in real time to prevent drift. As businesses deploy more autonomous AI in their processes, this ability to frame and make AI more reliable is becoming essential. For Orange, this represents a direct interest in building trusted AI environments, both for its own uses and for the services it offers to businesses.
NeuralTrust
Also awarded in the Cybersecurity & Quantum category, NeuralTrust (opens in a new window), a Spanish company, stands out for its position as a security platform dedicated to enterprise AI agents. The startup enables organizations to visualize, control and protect all deployed agents through a centralized approach to governance, threat detection and flow control. NeuralTrust therefore offers a direct response to a major challenge: maintaining control over AI agents as they become more widespread across business environments. Its relevance for Orange is clear: as AI agents are deployed across organizations and connected to critical systems, the question is no longer only one of performance, but of control. NeuralTrust can therefore become a key partner in helping Orange’s business customers adopt agentic AI in a safer, more governed and more compliant way.
Forgis
Finally, within the Live Intelligence ecosystem category, Forgis (opens in a new window) drew attention for its vision of an AI-augmented industry. The startup is developing a physical foundation model for manufacturing, designed to optimize entire factories in real time using very little data. By orchestrating machines, sensors and AI agents, Forgis helps improve quality, uptime, throughput, energy efficiency and robotics. The Fabrica platform, developed with ETH Zurich and IBM, acts as a “brain” for the factory. It delivers industrial intelligence that can help manufacturers become more flexible, efficient and competitive.
For Orange, this is a particularly interesting technology because it embodies applied, operational AI designed to improve the efficiency of critical environments.
Beyond the awards, this challenge illustrates Orange’s commitment to building, together with startups and partners, solutions capable of bringing concrete benefits to the market. By bringing innovation, business expertise and corporate needs closer together, this initiative creates the conditions for useful, responsible and directly value-creating use cases to emerge. That is the very spirit of Trust the Future: accelerating open, trusted and impact-driven innovation.