STATION F in 2023: A year of AI, Quantum and more

This year was incredible at STATION F - marked by many things, but especially AI and Quantum on campus. Our companies continued to surpass our expectations with no impact to funding volume, despite the economic climate. Our campus continued to grow with several new spaces - and we were pleased to continue host world leaders from many industries and countries. We are excited for what’s to come in 2024.

2023 at a glance

2023 has been an incredible year and tech world didn’t spare us of any excitement between Elon’s angry tweets, OpenAI’s CEO saga - and I’m not even going to go into crypto. In France, things have been perhaps a little more friendly though just as exciting, thanks largely to many announcements around AI in particular. At STATION F, we had a very strong year especially considering the economic context. Our companies raised just under €1bn this year, which is on par with the amount raised last year. We had witnessed a 20% drop after the first semester in comparison to 2022, which was largely recovered towards end of this year. This is even more impressive considering that funding drop for the French ecosystem at large was estimated at -50% after the first semester of 2023.

Funding: €1 billion raised, again :)

Despite the more challenging fundraising climate, European startups are back on track to raise €45 billion in funding this year. And our startups will once again be contributing €1 billion. When we look closer at startup funding at STATION F, this year was marked by fewer rounds overall and also fewer rounds that surpassed €10 million: 14 in 2023 versus 22 in 2022. Many of our companies tried to put off fundraising or moved to raising extension rounds, though we feel that many more will be fundraising in Q1 2024.

So what got funded this year? It is definitely no surprise that AI and ML surpassed all other categories in terms of funding volume, raising 3.6x more that the second most-funded sector, fintech/insurtech. See the table below for a complete view of the funding amount per sector.

Funding amount by sector for 2023

Future 40 Spotlight: 16 companies funded in 2023

As many of you know, Future 40 is our annual list of our 40 best-performing companies. This year, we made some changes to the criteria, allowing companies who had received more than €1 million in funding to be eligible. Some of the companies from the 2023 edition have already announced funding since November - including Pimento (€3m raised), Scienta Lab (€4m) and Spore.bio (€8m) If we consider all 5 editions of the Future 40 - which started in 2019 - 16 companies announced funding this year, totaling €53 million. Fintecture’s €26 million round raised in 2022 is still the largest Future 40 round raised to date. However Goodvest’s recent €10m round and Tomorro’s €11m round placed both companies alongside the other best-funded Future 40 companies, with the likes of Whitelab Genomics, Kinetix, Sifflet and DFNS.

The teaser video for our Future 40 pitch event

New AI and Quantum Programs on Campus

When it comes to programs on campus, we made an effort this year to strengthen our program offering for key tech and innovation trends. It’s very important to us to have solid programs to support companies working on the latest innovation trends. This year we decided to focus on 2 topics that we felt were gaining momentum and where France is particularly well-placed to lead: quantum computing and AI.

The French ecosystem is particularly well-placed to lead in both of these topic categories - and we know companies at STATION F will, too. Les Maisons du Quantique, our quantum program, is a unique program that brings together all the leading players in the local quantum landscape. And for AI, there seems to be little doubt that something special is happening in the French AI ecosystem. Our partners Microsoft and Meta both announced highly demanded AI programs this year, focusing on generative AI and open source AI, respectively. While Microsoft’s program kicked off in the fall, Meta - who is teaming up with Hugging Face and Scaleway - will kick off its program early 2024.

AI on campus: Sam Altman (OpenAI), Hugging Face (and their llamas) and Kyutai

Not surprisingly, AI continues to gain serious momentum on campus - and not just from our programs. Probably one of our biggest AI moments was when we hosted Sam Altman for an open Q&A session earlier this year - and got a record turn-out. However, there were many other incredible AI moments throughout the year. For example, Stripe’s Paris AI Day with John Collison and Hugging Face’s 2K-person AI meetup (llamas included!). More recently we held the launch event for Kyutai, the new €300 million European research lab (backed by our Xavier Niel, Eric Schmidt and Rodolphe Saadé). And to top it off, 25% of this year’s Future 40 companies were in AI. All that to say, AI kept us on our feet for most of the year. 🙂

Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI) at STATION F for a Q&A session in May 2023

The launch of Kyutai AI research lab, with Xavier Niel, Eric Schmidt and Rodolphe Saadé in November 2023

Hugging Face’s massive AI meetup in October 2023, featuring llamas :)

Bayside: our new California-style restaurant

Every year, we update different areas on campus with new furniture, equipment and more (we had a lot of fun with design during Covid 😅). This year, however, we are proud to have opened a new California-style restaurant at our coliving, Flatmates. This restaurant opened towards the end of November and the menu features everything that you’d expect to find in the Sunshine State - from wings to avocado toast, and a long list of salads, burgers and pizzas.

Memorable Visitors: President of South Korea, Cordell Broadus…

I have to admit, we continue to be blown away by the incredible visitors we receive. A lot of our top visitors were centered around AI this year - including Sam Altman (OpenAI), Cal Henderson (Slack), John Collison (Stripe), Hugging Face llamas ( 😅) and more. We were also pleased to receive CEOs and board members of some incredibly high-profile funds and organizations, including Sequoia Capital and KKR, to name a few. We hosted our 11th presidential visit with the President of South Korea - and had a surprise visit with Cordell Broadus as well :)

The President of South Korea visiting STATION F in June 2023

What to expect in 2024

The one thing that continues to excite us in the continued momentum that we feel at STATION F and in the greater ecosystem. Things are moving so fast - but there is still so much to be done! We strive to enrich our services and community in order to make sure that our entrepreneurs have the best-possible environment to build their companies.

New services for startups and partnership formats

We like growing :) First, we plan to grow our footprint and open additional spaces and services in 2024. STATION F has already grown from its original 34000m2 to over 50000m2. Extension projects that we plan to have live in 2024 include additional spaces that will house new services alongside the STATION F building (one shop is already open 🥳) with more extensions to come in the next few years. We also have additional spaces that will open at Flatmates, including the long-awaited gym. We are very excited for residents - and the public - to be able to access these new spaces.

In addition, we also plan to grow our partnership formats. We have a limited number of on-campus programs (which we refresh on a regular basis), however we are seeing interest for additional formats and ways to engage with our community. Therefore, we will be testing new partnership formats this year.

Growing the Fighters Program to 1,000 participants

Earlier this year we announced the redesign of the Fighters Program - our in-house program designed for entrepreneurs with unconventional backgrounds. And we’ve had quite a few solid companies come out of the program, including Oneflash, Reenbow, Fresh Afrika and more. But we felt that we were not doing enough and we needed to support more Fighters if we really wanted to make a difference. With the new program format, we were able to work with just under 400 entrepreneurs in 2023, and in 2024 we are planning to grow this number to 1,000. If you know someone who may be considered a potential Fighter and may be contemplating launching a company, please send them here. The next batch kicks off on February 5, 2024.

More international collaboration and startups on campus

STATION F has always been very international with approximately 1/3 of our community coming from outside of France. Entrepreneurs coming from abroad often apply for one of our 30 programs and join STATION F just like all other companies. However, this year we tested a new 2-week visitor program with a Japanese organization. Their entrepreneurs had a dedicated program and were also able to discover the ecosystem, make connections, work at STATION F and use all our campus resources - and then return to Japan to develop their businesses. We believe that facilitating these international connections will not only be beneficial for our foreign friends but also for the French ecosystem, which is becoming more international by the day.

Many international ecosystems also seek to learn from our model in order to strengthen their own ecosystems. In 2023 we announced the launch of our 2-Day Immersion Program, which has worked with 8 different ecosystems so far - from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This is an intense program with back-to-back workshops and discussions, whereby we literally share the playbook on how we built STATION F. For anyone interested, the next edition will take place in May 2024. In the meantime, we continue to explore closer collaboration opportunities with campuses-to-be (we have worked with an Asia-based campus that is planning to launch next year).

STATION F only works because of all the incredible support we receive

Each year, I become even more convinced and grateful with regards to the power of our community. We are so privileged to be surrounded by so many supportive organizations and people from a variety of sectors and backgrounds. We also receive so much support from the greater ecosystem. I hope that people continue to share their ideas and feedback with us - so that we can continue to build this ecosystem for years to come. Thank you for a wonderful 2023 and excited to see what we can build together in 2024 :)