Vivatech: AI, Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Macron and dancing robots getting tripped up… What it does

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the event, the organizers of Vivatech, the high mass of European tech which is held in Paris, Porte de Versailles, pulled out all the stops. For the first time, three levels of hall 7 of the Exhibition Center were occupied, compared to just one until then. If we were to judge the success of the event in terms of attendance, there is no doubt that it is immense. Braving the heatwave, nearly 200,000 people walked through them. Some 4,000 exhibitors were present, including Microsoft, Adobe and L’Oréal, but also fast-rising start-ups like Chapsvision. Local authorities were not left out: the regions had their own large-scale stand – to the great astonishment of a Swedish investor who was moved, to L’Opinion, by the fate of taxpayers’ money – just like major universities like PSL or Paris-Saclay. Even the DGSE was involved. As for the foreign pavilions, in addition to India, delegations from the Ivory Coast, Ukraine and Italy, in particular, were present.

The shock wave of the ban, outside the United States, of Claude Fable 5

Several major global figures in the sector came to reveal their vision for the years to come. The most famous of them, Jeff Bezos, participated on Wednesday June 17 in a keynote lasting almost an hour to present his ambitions in the conquest of space and artificial intelligence. The same day, the 2019 Turing Prize, the Frenchman Yann Le Cun, one of the founding fathers of AI, spoke in particular on technological sovereignty, one of the major themes of the 2026 edition of Vivatech and a major issue for France and Europe, a few days after the Trump administration’s decision to ban access to Claude Fable 5, one of Anthropic’s most advanced models, from all non-US users. An announcement which ended up causing the same shock wave in political and technological circles as JD Vance’s Munich speech in February 2024 had done in security and diplomatic circles.

Another celebrity, Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, whose chips power almost all of the world’s AI models, returned to Paris for his now ritual keynote. A year earlier, on the same platform, he had promised Europe the construction of more than twenty factories, the famous AI factories, and sealed a partnership with Mistral AI. This year, he presented a progress update, making some announcements on agentic infrastructures and rolling out a roadmap for physical AI. The next day, Jensen Huang shared the stage with Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, who did not have a stand at Vivatech, and Emmanuel Macron.

The President’s visit was one of the highlights of this year. Coming accompanied by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, she seemed like a farewell for the man who had the ambition, during his first presidential campaign, to make France a start-up nation. Coincidence of the calendar or not, the day before the opening of the show, the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, announced an additional envelope of 655 million euros as part of France 2030, intended to accelerate the deployment of AI in administration, health, justice and defense. Less than a year before the presidential election, many political leaders also made the trip: Edouard Philippe, Wednesday, Gabriel Attal, Thursday, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, this Friday.

The failure of RebuilderAI’s humanoid robots

In addition to the extremely serious subjects for the technological and economic future of the Old Continent, the 2026 edition will have reserved a few moments of involuntary lightness. From the first day, June 17, a demonstration on the stand of RebuilderAI, a South Korean start-up specializing in AI solutions applied to 3D scanning, almost turned into a disaster. Two Unitree G1 humanoid robots had been programmed to perform a synchronized choreography in front of the audience. Over the course of their performance, the machines gradually approached the screens installed at the back of the stand… before colliding with them, in a perfectly coordinated movement, but clearly not planned. Several televisions fell and smashed to the ground. No injuries, but the video set the networks on fire in a few hours. A reminder that, behind the keynotes with precise words and the promises of industrial revolution, technology remains a matter of imperfect machines, like man.