Microsoft announces GenAI Studio, leverages powerful AI network for startups

Over the last year, the AI community and resources at STATION F have grown exponentially. In 2023, we were honored to host Sam Altman for a massive Ask Me Anything session, a 2K-person meet-up with Hugging Face, the launch of Kyutai and many other incredible AI moments and events. Both Microsoft and Meta announced AI-programs, with Microsoft focusing on GenAI and Meta focusing on open source - and leveraging the expertise of our AI-unicorn, Hugging Face.

Since the beginning of 2024, we cohosted Entrepreneur First’s AI Startup School (including top speakers like Mistral’s Arthur Mensch). We also cohosted a massive AI dinner with Hugging Face and AMD, for over 50 startup founders, many AI leaders - including Meta AI Leader, Yann LeCun. There have been many other AI workshops and leaders on campus, with many more to come - including Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic) who will be on campus next week!

Yann LeCun's speech during our AI Dinner with Hugging Face and AMD

This morning Microsoft announced a massive €4 billion commitment to AI in France - its biggest investment in France to date. This is a comprehensive investment, covering AI infrastructure and resources, education - and of course a complete overhaul of their AI program at STATION F. This initiative supports French startups and aligns with France's goal of cultivating top AI businesses.

The program - called the GenAI Studio - will kick off in September and host 15 startups per batch. Microsoft will leverage its unparalleled AI network to bring some of the best AI companies and resources to campus for our AI startups to work with (no spoilers, Microsoft will share which partners it will bring to campus shortly). This also demonstrates Microsoft's long-term commitment to STATION F, which has been on our campus since day one. We are incredibly excited and feel that this will heavily reinforce AI on campus.

Read the full Microsoft press release here.