New incubation program at Station F for IP Paris entrepreneurs
The objective of this new program at Station F, placed under the governance of Télécom Paris and managed operationally by the school's incubator team, is to provide support over a period of 18 months to startups in the seed phase (from pre-seed to Series A), most of which have been founded or co-founded by alumni of Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and to host projects linked to the schools' key research themes, such as digital trust, frugal AI, networks and data science.
"Télécom Paris, the leading digital engineering school in France, and all the founding schools of Institut Polytechnique de Paris see innovation and entrepreneurship as a cross-cutting topic that concerns students, academics, alumni, and all our partners. Joining Station F is one more step in our development, to be ever more at the forefront of the support we can offer, and to be more involved into innovation and entrepreneurship networks," said Nicolas Glady, Director of Télécom Paris and Vice President of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Institut Polytechnique de Paris, at the inauguration of the program held on September 20 at Station F.
When selecting projects, a strong emphasis is given to the internalization of the technological development of the product, as well as to the mastery of R&D subjects by one of the founders.
This program will also be an opportunity to support advanced student entrepreneurship projects, as well as projects by academics. IP Paris has nearly 1,400 researchers and some 50 patents filed each year.
"IP Paris is fully committed to address the major societal challenges of our time, which are the ecological transition, the energy transition, and the development of France's industrial and technological sovereignty. It is with this in mind that we are providing training courses in innovation and raising awareness about entrepreneurship in our schools. For example, we offer open design and prototyping spaces, conferences on technological entrepreneurship, hackathons and learning expeditions during major innovation events such as Vivatech, of course, and Spring on Saclay Plateau that was notably held at École Polytechnique this year," added Bruno Cattan, Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at École Polytechnique and Director of the Innovation Committee at Institut Polytechnique de Paris.
IP Paris has three incubators: the Télécom Paris Incubator in Paris, the Drahi-X Novation Center at X in Palaiseau, and the Télécom SudParis IMT Starter in Evry, through which it supports more than 80 startups each year in GreenTech, HealthTech, Industry 4.0, New Mobilities, and Digital Technologies. Nearly ten of the 27 French unicorns are from the IP Paris ecosystem (founded/co-founded, managed or coming from its incubators) and 35% of Next40 start-ups are founded/managed by Alumni or coming from IP Paris incubators.