For a long time, major technology shows functioned as showcases for the future. People came to discover innovations that would transform our lives, admire spectacular demonstrations, and listen to visionaries describe tomorrow’s world. Ten years after its creation, VivaTech seems to have reached a new milestone. The 2026 edition no longer solely celebrates innovation. It questions its capacity to produce results.
Present in Paris with the French Foreign Trade Advisors, at the Business France booth, I found an event that had been profoundly transformed. Of course, humanoid robots still draw crowds. Artificial intelligence demonstrations occupy every hall. Major international figures continue to fill conference rooms. Yet behind this excitement, the event’s center of gravity has shifted.
The most interesting discussions no longer focus on what technology might enable tomorrow. They focus on what it produces today. Companies want to know how to deploy artificial intelligence at scale, how to protect their data, how to reduce their technological dependencies, how to finance their critical infrastructures, and how to transform promising experiments into sustainable business models.
This shift in perspective says a lot about our times.
A Show That Has Become a Global Strategic Platform
When Maurice Lévy and Bernard Arnault launched VivaTech ten years ago, the ambition was to demonstrate that Europe could host a technology event of global dimension. The bet seemed bold. At the time, Silicon Valley largely dominated imaginations and major international innovation gatherings were concentrated primarily in the United States or Asia.
Ten years later, the question no longer arises. The presence of political leaders, international business executives, investment funds, researchers, and institutional officials from around the world testifies to the event’s change in status.
VivaTech has become a place where several forms of power meet: economic power, technological power, political power, and scientific power.
The presence of Emmanuel Macron and Narendra Modi illustrates this evolution. Their participation goes far beyond the ceremonial framework. It reminds us that digital technologies, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructures, and semiconductors have now become diplomatic subjects in their own right.
Technology has become a matter of sovereignty.
Artificial Intelligence Is No Longer a Trend
If this edition could be summarized in one sentence, it might be this: artificial intelligence is everywhere, but it’s no longer the main subject.
This may seem paradoxical given how much the booths, conferences, and announcements talk about AI throughout the day. Yet what’s most striking is the maturity of the conversations.
Two years ago, debates focused primarily on the promises of generative artificial intelligence. Companies were trying to understand its potential. Consultants were imagining transformation scenarios. Experts discussed risks and opportunities. This phase now seems to have passed.
Executives no longer ask whether AI will transform their organization. They want to know which infrastructure to choose, which model to deploy, which data to use, how to govern usage, and how to measure results. The vocabulary itself has changed: we talk less about demonstration and more about deployment. Less about pilots and more about governance. Less about experimentation and more about profitability. Artificial intelligence is gradually leaving the territory of innovation to enter that of operational management.
Sovereignty Becomes an Economic Criterion
One of the most striking developments observed this year concerns digital sovereignty. For a long time, the subject was primarily carried by public institutions. It belonged more to political discourse than economic reality. Today, the situation is different.
CIOs, compliance officers, procurement departments, and audit committees now integrate the origin of technologies, data location, and technological dependencies into their decision criteria. This evolution explains the visibility given to European cloud players.
The announcements made by OVHcloud and Scaleway perfectly illustrate this trend. Both companies seek to demonstrate that credible European alternatives can exist against American hyperscalers. The subject is no longer ideological; it’s becoming operational.
When the European Commission awards several strategic contracts to European consortia to host critical infrastructures, it sends a strong signal to the entire market.
Sovereignty is leaving the realm of intentions to enter that of contracts.
Europe Faces Its Real Challenge: Industrialization
Contrary to certain preconceived ideas, Europe’s main problem is not a lack of innovation. Startups are numerous. Research laboratories produce remarkable advances. Engineers are present. Funding is growing. The challenge lies elsewhere. It resides in the ability to transform an innovation into an industrial player capable of scaling rapidly.
This question runs throughout the entire show. The discussions organized around technology transfer, particularly with CNRS Innovation, reminded us that the transition from research to market remains one of the most complex stages of the innovation cycle.
An invention has economic value only when it finds users. A startup becomes a strategic player only when it reaches critical mass. A technology transforms a sector only when it’s massively adopted.
This reality explains why discussions around public procurement occupy a growing place in European debates. Without first customers, without structuring contracts, and without support for industrialization, the most promising technologies struggle to cross the critical stages of their development.
Between Storytelling and Ground Reality
What’s most striking about VivaTech is not just the size of the show. It’s its ability to make several levels of interpretation coexist. Within a few meters, visitors move from a spectacular keynote to a much more discreet booth presenting a product already deployed in a community, bank, or industrial company.
This juxtaposition tells a lot about the sector’s evolution.
Prestige and visibility remain powerful levers at an event like VivaTech. However, the richest exchanges often revolve around projects capable of providing concrete proof of their effectiveness, whether through already deployed use cases, measurable gains, or credible feedback. This is now the ground on which trust is built.
VivaTech acts as a kaleidoscope of global technology. Some exhibitors present a vision of the future. Others already show the present. Some tell what they hope to accomplish. Others demonstrate what they’ve actually achieved. For visitors, the exercise becomes more demanding. They must distinguish demonstrations designed to impress from solutions capable of durably transforming a market.
When Robots Finally Leave the Stage
Robotics is one of the best examples of this evolution. Humanoid robots are omnipresent. Unitree and AGIBOT are among the most photographed and commented-on exhibitors at the show. Demonstrations attract dense crowds. Videos circulate massively on social networks.
But while they remain among the most photographed attractions at the show, the debates they generate have profoundly evolved. It’s no longer simply about admiring their ability to reproduce certain human movements or execute spectacular demonstrations. The challenge now is to understand how these machines can integrate into companies’ value chains. Also, what productivity gains they can generate, what constraints they’ll impose in terms of maintenance and safety, and in which sectors they’ll be able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Behind the spectacle, the central question becomes that of their real economic utility.
The conference devoted to “Physical AI” illustrated this evolution. Behind the spectacle of humanoid robots emerges a much deeper reflection on integrating artificial intelligence into the physical world. Value no longer resides in technical demonstration, but in solving concrete problems. Examples of robots designed for underwater mine clearance, fighting extreme fires, or high-risk industrial environments show that robotics is gradually ceasing to be an attraction. It’s becoming infrastructure.
From DefTech to Space: Technology Regains Its Strategic Dimension
Another strong trend at VivaTech 2026 lies in the return of geopolitics.
The MBDA booth perfectly illustrates this evolution. The European company specializing in defense systems now fully claims its membership in “DefTech,” a contraction of Defense Technology.
Long separated, the worlds of defense and civilian innovation are increasingly converging.
Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, satellites, autonomous systems, quantum computing, or data analysis all have dual uses. This evolution reflects an international context marked by rising geopolitical tensions and the reappearance of sovereignty issues.
The same observation applies to space. Jeff Bezos’s conference was one of the show’s highlights. The founder of Amazon and Blue Origin didn’t come to sell a futuristic dream. He came to defend an industrial vision of space. Telecommunications, logistics, Earth observation, access to resources, and industrial production: space is presented as the next major economic infrastructure. This vision comes in a context where space competition is intensifying between public and private players.
It reminds us that mastery of strategic infrastructures remains a central factor of power.
The Most Useful Innovation Is Sometimes the Least Visible
One of the most interesting lessons from this edition concerns the uses of artificial intelligence in communities and public services. These projects rarely attract crowds, but they nevertheless produce immediate effects.
Urban management support tools, information flow optimization, improved citizen relations, or automation of certain administrative tasks—these solutions don’t make headlines, but they address very concrete needs.
They remind us that innovation doesn’t always need to be spectacular to be transformative. On the contrary, technologies that discreetly integrate into existing processes often produce the most lasting impacts.
A Meeting Under the Sign of Francophonie
This edition was also an opportunity to meet Éléonore Caroit, Minister Delegate for Francophonie and International Partnerships. I had the pleasure of presenting her with a copy of our book EntrepreneurIA – Conseils d’entrepreneurs, co-written with Dr. Yves-Marie Le Bay.
While major models are predominantly developed in English, the Francophonie represents a considerable economic, cultural, and scientific space. Linguistic diversity can play an important role in developing a more inclusive artificial intelligence better adapted to the diversity of cultural contexts.
The End of the Age of Promises
At the end of this anniversary edition, one conclusion is clear. VivaTech 2026 is not the artificial intelligence show; it’s the show of its implementation.
The event marks the transition from a decade dominated by promises to a decade dominated by execution. Companies no longer seek only to understand emerging technologies. They want to know how to integrate them, how to govern them, and how to derive measurable value from them.
Robots still impress. Major announcements continue to make headlines. Global leaders attract attention. But the most credible projects are often those that already demonstrate their usefulness in a real environment. The hierarchy of value is changing. Technology is no longer judged on its ability to impress, but on its ability to be deployed.
And that’s probably the most important lesson from VivaTech 2026.
Pascale Caron | AI Strategy Advisor | International Keynote Speaker | Co-author of EntrepreneurIA | Conferences • Executive Advisory • AI Governance
