Every year, hundreds of (very) early-stage startups choose to participate in one of the startup programs of Station F, an iconic startup campus based in Paris. And Station F has shared a list of the 40 most promising startups as part of the Future 40 selection.
Some of them participate in Station F’s own programs, such as the Fighters Program for entrepreneurs with underprivileged backgrounds and the FemTech Program for startups working specifically on female health, women’s sexual health and more.
Others join Station F through third-party companies that have signed partnerships with Station F to run their own tiny little incubator inside of the startup campus. These partners include Microsoft, Binance, LVMH and a newly announced AI program with Meta and Hugging Face.
It’s also worth noting that, last year, Station F completely overhauled its flagship in-house program — the Founders Program — to turn it into a sort of startup accelerator. In exchange for a 1% equity stake, startups are invited to workshops and classes to iterate rapidly on their projects. There are some demo pitches and some opportunities for one-on-one time with advisors.
“At first, we want to remain founder friendly. Some people told us it’s not a lot, others say that it’s a lot,” Station F director Roxanne Varza told me at the time of the change. “But Station F is not here to take 50% in equity. We just want to prove that we have skin in the game and that we will remain engaged,” she added.
That’s why this year’s Future 40 list is more interesting than usual as some of them are technically backed by Station F itself. I’ll share the full list of startups at the bottom of this article, but I wanted to highlight some of the interesting ones first.
In France, a lot of houses started showing cracks following an intense summer draught. WeatherMind is using computer vision to automatically assess damages due to natural disasters. That could be helpful for insurance companies.
Another interesting startup is Argil, which sounds a bit like Dust. This company lets you build AI assistants that can answer work questions based on internal data stored in Google Drive or Notion. Of course, Notion itself isn’t standing still as it now offers its own AI assistant.
One of the most successful French startups is Mirakl, a software-as-a-service solution for e-commerce retailers and B2B companies that want to add a marketplace of third-party products to their own platform. Nopli is one of this year’s Next 40 companies that want to help retailers add a marketplace of second-hand products to their site. Tuffery has already started using it for second-hand clothes.
Jitter looks like a promising creative tool. The best way to describe it is that it works a bit like Figma, but with a focus on motion design. People use it in a web browser to collaborate on animated content. And given how PhotoRoom and Mojo have thrived here in France, it’s going to be interesting to keep an eye on Jitter.
Louise is working on fertility and plans to use AI to improve the patient journey and get better results. That’s an interesting use case for AI.
I could go on and on as other startups caught my eye — but I want to keep this selection short. I’ve also covered some of them already on TechCrunch, such as Revyze and Flowie.
Here’s the full list of this year’s Next 40 startups at Station F:
Bitstack is the easiest way to save and invest in bitcoin in Europe. Users get started by rounding up their purchases and investing the spare change in bitcoin, and then they can buy, sell, earn and spend bitcoin directly in the app.
Differs centralizes predictive AI solutions for retailers. Designed for business users, our solutions enable retailers with limited data science capabilities to predict customers’ behavior for optimal decision making.
Flippit is a GenAI startup helping brands and IP-holders connect with digital-native audiences.
Magma is a solution that allows you to easily connect your candidates with your ambassadors. Boost your recruitment performance and let your candidates immerse themselves in your environment.
WeatherMind is an AI-powered software that helps insurers and loss adjusters automate damage assessment on houses affected by natural disasters.
Argil empowers teams with skilled AI teammates that collaborate with them on their projects.
Beavr automates CSR compliance and streamlines associated operations.
Kolverr is the best career platform for the green workforce.
Nopli is a white-label technological and operational solution that enables brands to launch their second-hand offer. It works as a branded CtoC marketplace accessible directly on brands’ websites that maximizes value and experience of every stakeholders.
Scienta Lab is a deep tech company using artificial intelligence to transform pharmaceutical R&D in immunology and inflammation. With its unique and proprietary foundation model, Scienta Lab accelerates the discovery of new therapeutic targets and the development of personalized treatments to fill the unmet medical needs of more than 400 million patients worldwide.
Chift helps SaaS vendors unleash the power of integrations: one singe integration with Chift API to connect to most European software.
Dsflow is a modern Energy Portfolio Management SaaS. It helps energy buyers, producers and traders from enterprise organizations consolidate their energy market positions and monitor their financial risks in real time.
Exwayz develops a unique and innovative positioning software solution for mobile robotics based on real-time 3D lidar data processing. We give mobile robots a safe way for their autonomous missions, in any kind of environments.
Optimiz Construction is a solution to optimize the cutting and laying of materials to save time, money and CO2.
Qeels is a viral machine on TikTok. It has built the new standard in a fully automated, performance-based platform that connects next-generation creators with brands to reinvent influencer campaigns.
Jitter is a collaborative motion design tool on the web. It helps designers create high-fidelity animations for their interfaces, videos and marketing content, easily — it’s like Figma for motion design.
Louise builds collaborative insight on human fertility, using privacy preserving technology and cutting edge AI.
Monde Singulier is the No. 1 marketplace of exclusive collectible designs from the world’s leading designers and brands.
Pimento is the webspace where creative teams collaborate with AI to better conceive their projects.
Spore.Bio develops a new generation of microbiological detection devices. Their AI-based proprietary technology detects bacteria on food, cosmetics and pharma samples within seconds while conventional methods take up to five days.
explorz is the app to stop scrolling and have fun outside with your friends.
Inclusive Brains develops an assistive tech platform that improves everyone’s psychological and physical safety regardless of their abilities and condition: Its proprietary generative AI, combined with brain sciences, enables machines and digital environments to be mind-controlled and to adapt to people’s emotional and cognitive states in real time.
Motion Society provides content creators with a smart optimization solution to adapt and distribute their videos across all social media platforms — an end-to-end solution that allows content creators to fully focus on content creation.
Nelson is a data-driven SaaS solution designed to help companies plan, deploy and operate the best electrification strategy for their car fleet.
Flagcat is shaping the future of webtoons.
Quack AI helps large software companies run like the most efficient open source projects. Our AI-powered IDE extension guides developers through the best steps to make a smooth contribution, regardless of the team they’re from.
Yacon & co is a French company that sells the healthiest and most natural sugar alternative called yacon syrup.
Sopht is the first GreenOps platform to decarbonize corporate IT.
ColibriTD is building a Quantum as a service platform to help solve key humanity challenges. Democratizing access to transformative quantum technologies for all enterprises.
Finegrain makes it dead simple to dynamically apply generative filters on top of your images, and track user engagement across all image variations.
Rools is compliance intelligence for the regulated industries.
Tracklab is a B2B SaaS platform that empowers SMBs by streamlining their supplier management processes, ensuring they collaborate with dependable and secure partners.
Carbonx is the procurement platform for permanent carbon removal.
Mindflow is the first AI-driven platform for enterprise hyperautomation, that makes automation achievable in the whole company to dramatically increase efficiency and consistency of repetitive processes.
Revyze is on a mission to provide accessible, personalized education to anyone, anywhere in the world. We enable millions of students to learn better together through community-generated short-form videos.
Flowie is a multimodal SaaS platform designed to streamline B2B transactions by automating the invoicing and payment validation processes, especially in industries with complex validation processes due to non-recurrent revenue streams.
Kenko is the first insurance that every employee can tailor to their health needs, at no extra cost.
Reetags is a solution that allows e-commerce merchants to broadcast videos with purchasable features.
Stabler offers state-of-the-art / industrial webscraping solutions for large companies, SMEs and solo entrepreneurs, as well as fully-managed solutions. You focus on data and value creation, we handle the extraction.
Suzan AI is the first European AI governance platform, helping companies deploy compliant and responsible AI. It automates up to 80% of the AI regulatory compliance burden and supports the teams that will focus on the remaining 20%.