Station Fa Paris-based startup hub founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel is gearing up for a new edition of F/ai accelerator program in a bid to strengthen its position as a stepping stone for promising AI startups.
It started in January of this yearF/ai plans to launch its second batch this September, aiming to help a handful of AI-focused startups move from early product to real revenue within weeks.
At 538,000 square feet, Station F is often described as a co-working space, but its footprint extends beyond the physical space, its director Roxanne Varza told TechCrunch.
An example is F’s Future 40 station annual selection, in which the group names the most promising teams among the approximately 1,000 companies it welcomes each year. In 2024, TechCrunch observed that nearly all of this annual cohort incorporated AI into their core business.
Station F today has a front-row seat to the rise of AI startups, capitalizing on its position as a cornerstone of “la French Tech”. The startup hub has also successfully leveraged its position to acquire stakes in Future 40 companies. “We have invested [in these companies] from 2022,” Varza said.
Aided both by its size and Niel’s connections, Station F has become a frequent stop for officials seeking to connect with Europe’s tech scene, with at least 11 presidential visits since President Macron’s inaugural tour in 2017. It has also welcomed big names in artificial intelligence such as Sam Altman and is now leveraging those ties for the F/ai.
The first group of the F/ai program was backed by a long list of major tech companies — AMD, Anthropic, AWS, Clay, Google, G42, Hugging Face, Lovable, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, OVHcloud, Snowflake and Qualcomm — not to mention several VC funds.
The second cohort will add a few more big names, TechCrunch has learned: Eleven Labs, Nebius, Rippling, OpenRouter, HubSpot and GitHub.
“The goal was to bring all the important players together and make it much easier [AI] startups that want to start in Europe to connect with them,” Varza said.
Two teams from the accelerator’s first batch have already gained international recognition: Alpic, which won the world grand final of The fielda competition organized by Deel; and Rippletide, which won the OpenAI Codex Hackathon.
While prizes rarely hurt, especially when they offer funding, F/ai is focused on helping its team generate revenue, targeting 1 million euros (about $1.14 million) within six months. “We had heard a lot of criticism about the slow pace of commercialization of European startups,” Varza said. “That puts them on par with what investors are seeing in the US”
Investors seem to like what they’ve seen so far. The first group collectively raised $34 million in pre-seed funding, according to Station F. The groups’ backgrounds may have also helped: 80% of these 20 AI startups were founded by repeat entrepreneurs, a third of whom hold Ph.D.s.
The founder profile is skewed this way largely because F/ai selects its cohort solely through recommendations from founders, partners and investors — a process that could add to the clique and elitism France’s tech scene is sometimes accused of.
But while teams can’t apply directly, they can get in touch with one of F/ai’s many partners and perhaps soon with alumni, Varza said. He added that Station F has some 30 other programs startups can apply.
Access appears to be a key focus for F/ai, which has previously hosted private talks with the likes of Turing Award winner Yann LeCun. “Today, if founders here want to talk to people at this level, it seems like everyone thinks they have to go to the US and join a program there. We really want to show that you can stay here and do it from here,” Varza said.
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