- 150,000 visitors at Porte de Versailles
- 405,000 online visitors
- 11,400 startups
- 2,800 exhibitors
- +450 speakers
The 7th edition of VivaTech, which took place 14-17 June in Paris, broke a new attendance record by exceeding the 150,000 visitor mark for the first time. VivaTech thus becomes the new unmissable global meeting place for tech, startups and digital.
Over four days, visitors from 174 countries were able to discover hundreds of world-exclusive innovations and hear some of the world’s leading speakers, among them Elon Musk, who drew a packed crowd to Le Dôme de Paris for the occasion, and Marc Benioff, Chairman, CEO and co-Founder of Salesforce.
Record figures across the board: 919 million people reached on social networks, 5 million viewers for the VivaTech News channel, and more than 6 billion impressions on social media.
VIVA TECHNOLOGY, THE EPICENTER OF INTERNATIONAL TECH
More than 450 speakers discussed today’s most pressing topics and the challenges that lie ahead, zeroing in on artificial intelligence, Climate Tech, and inclusion and diversity in tech, with a special focus on the “Future of Sport”, in partnership with Global Sports Week.
One of the major highlights this year was Elon Musk’s conversation with Maurice Lévy at the Dôme de Paris, which was attended by more than 6,000 people in a highly enthusiastic atmosphere.
Among the high-profile speakers who came specially to Paris were Marc Benioff, CEO and co-founder of Salesforce; Yann Le Cun, chief AI scientist at Meta, who received the Turing Award in 2018; Hans Vestberg, CEO de Verizon; Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal; Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of OneWeb; Dava Newman, Director of the MIT Media Lab; Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange; Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under US President Bill Clinton, and Director of the White House National Economic Council under President Barack Obama…
French President Emmanuel Macron chose VivaTech as the stage for announcing a plan to invest nearly €6 billion in positive-impact startups and €500 million in artificial intelligence.
Also present at this year’s edition of VivaTech: Bernard Arnault, Chairman & CEO, LVMH; Ana Paula De Jesus Assis, Chair & General Manager EMEA, IBM; Eva Benerke, CEO, Eutelsat; Alexandre Bompard, CEO, Carrefour; Cyril Chiche, co-founder & CEO, Lydia; J. Michael Evans, CEO, Alibaba Group; Pascal Gauthier, CEO, Ledger; Zoubin Ghahramani, Senior Research Director, Google Brain; Ronan Harris, President EMEA, SNAP Inc.; Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO, l’Oréal Groupe; Nicolas Julia, co-Founder & CEO, Sorare; Peggy Johnson, CEO, Magic Leap; Peter Koerte, CTO, Siemens; Blaise Matuidi, international footballer and Founder, Origins; Luca de Meo, CEO, Renault; Matthew McWhirt, Managing Director, Google Cloud / Mandiant; Dava Newman Berta de Pablos-Barbier, President & CEO, Moët & Chandon, LVMH; Laurence Parisot, former President of Medef and President of Citi France; Arthur Sadoun, Chairman & CEO, Publicis Groupe; Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, French tennis player, mentor of the BNP Paribas Jeunes Talents team…
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne along with numerous members of government, members of parliament, presidents of regions and members of international governments, took a very active part in VivaTech this year, as did Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister Delegate for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, who was at VivaTech for the entire four days.
After India, the first Country of the Year in 2022, it was the Republic of Korea’s turn to be honored at this latest edition of VivaTech. Thanks to its flourishing technology ecosystem, which includes no less than 14 unicorns, Korea is a strategic economic partner for countless countries and companies. 150 startups were in attendance alongside Lee Young, Minister for SMEs and Startups of the Republic of Korea.
ACCELERATOR FOR THE FINANCING AND DEVELOPMENT OF STARTUPS
Once again this year, Viva Technology provided tech professionals with unrivaled access to international customers, major investors and new markets. The startups, 50% of them from outside France, had access to 1,700 investment funds over the three B2B days of VivaTech.
Showcasing the world’s top startups
Europe’s most promising startups were honored at the 5th edition of the Next Unicorn Awards. Pennylane (in the Fintech Category), Defined.ai (Deeptech), Oviva (Digital Media), Matsmart (Impact), Wallapop (Marketplace) and Pigment (Saas BtoB) received the highest award for potential scale-ups.
More than 50 challenges were also launched (70% of them international), in areas such as sustainable development, diversity & inclusion, the future of work, and the future of sport, with 4,000 candidates and 65% of submissions from abroad.
For the second year running, Viva Technology and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) renewed the AfricaTech Awards, a pan-African initiative aimed at recognizing and supporting the most innovative startups in the Climate Tech, Health Tech and Fintech sectors based in or working with the African continent. Startups were rewarded in several categories: Kubik for Climate Tech, Curacel for Health Tech, and Waspito in the Fintech category.
The Female Founder Challenge – organized by VivaTech and 50inTech with the support this year of Axa, Mazars and Société Générale – awarded the top prize to Zuzanna Stamirowska, founder of French deeptech startup Pathway, the first Python framework for easily building data products, which recently announced a $4.5 million fundraising round. The award was presented by French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
As every year, the LVMH Innovation Awards challenge was organized by the LVMH group. This year’s prize went to Save Your Wardrobe, a platform dedicated to clothing repair and maintenance. And to bring the European ecosystem together in the most environmentally friendly way possible, the Tech on Track initiative, run jointly with the SNCF, enabled dozens of startups, investors and cross-border journalists to travel by train to Paris.
“Viva Technology 2023 ended by setting a new attendance record of 150,000 visitors. This is not only a tremendous reward for the hard work of our teams, it also confirms the vitality of the European tech, digital and startup ecosystem, and the unique role that VivaTech plays in it. By multiplying the opportunities for business and innovation players from all over the world to meet in Paris, we are contributing to the development of an ever more economically efficient and useful tech and digital sector, for the planet, for communities and for individuals,” say VivaTech co-presidents Maurice Lévy and Pierre Louette, and VivaTech CEO François Bitouzet.
