Today, computer science and digital technology are revolutionising all sectors of business and almost every aspect of human life. Building on its extensive experience of supporting businesses, creating new enterprises and collaborating with both major industrial groups and SMEs, Inria has once again made its scientific expertise available to technology transfer, businesses and society as a whole with the aim of creating value and jobs.

startupStart-ups

Since 1984, over 130 innovative technological companies have been founded by Inria researchers across a wide range of industrial sectors. This illustrates the remarkable diffusion potential of computer science throughout society. In 2015, Inria celebrated thirty years of enterprise creation, honouring its entrepreneurial successes. This celebration has provided an ideal opportunity to highlight the crucial role played by the creation of innovative start-up companies in the policies implemented by the Institute to transfer technology and expertise. The Graines d’entrepreneurs [FR] exhibition, held as part of the celebrations, displayed the entrepreneurial dynamism of Inria researchers, together with their commitment to transform the results of their research into concrete innovations and an immediate benefit to society.

Ten start-ups created by Inria in 2015

  • Alerion offers intelligent solutions by and for civilian drones.
  • AutoKab installs automatic public transport systems using driverless vehicle technology.
  • Anatoscope is a software solution enabling the construction and simulation of 3D digital avatars generated from patient medical data with the aim of providing the patients with the most appropriate care.
  • Deepomatic makes use of deep learning technology to automatically monetise images from web and mobile media.
  • iQSpot offers a dedicated software platform for intelligent building management that mobilises employees to help reduce energy costs for businesses.
  • Lamark is a specialist in image recognition and interpretation. This start-up company markets the Lamark-Metadata web platform to simplify access to the metadata in digital images.
  • Makitoo offers a solution to detect and correct bugs in mobile and PC applications in real time.
  • Mediego analyses the profiles of individual web users in order to offer them products and services that match their tastes.
  • Pixyl provides a service to medical researchers in the form of a new software solution to extract additional information on various lesions and/or pathologies from cerebral MRI data.
  • Regaind offers automatic photograph sorting solutions for the mass market. These include applications of automatic image classification algorithms.

A number of our existing start-ups also enjoyed significant successes in 2015:

  • Vulog, a European leader in car sharing technology founded in 2006 in the laboratories of the Inria Sophia Antipolis research Centre, received an injection of capital of 8.4 million euros from the Bpifrance Ecotechnologies Fund and the London-based growth capital fund, Environmental Technologies Fund.
  • Therapixel, a start-up company founded in 2013, received a capital injection of 600 000 euros for the commercial development of Fluid, a software package for medical imaging in operating theatres controlled remotely by movement sensors.
  • The recently created start-up iQSpot, specialising in energy saving, received funding of 300 000 euros from the IT-Translation first-stage seed fund.
  • XtremLogic, an Inria start-up founded in 2014, has won a place on the 2015 Netva programme supported by the science and technology departments of the French embassies in Canada and the USA to help young businesses develop on the international stage.
  • Distene, an Inria start-up founded in 2002, was awarded the Jury Prize in the first Digital Simulation Trophy competition for its meshing software.
  • Seven Inria projects have won prizes in the i-Lab competition, sponsored by the French Ministry of Research and Bpifrance with the aim of supporting the creation of French businesses based on the most innovative technologies.

Finally, at the end of 2015, Inria launched an awareness programme aimed at developing an entrepreneurial culture among its young researchers and expanding the opportunities for business creation.

partenariatsPartnerships

An important aspect of Inria’s work consists of forging new partnerships and strengthening existing collaborations with major industrial groups and SMEs.

Major groups

  • The Facebook Group has chosen to collaborate with Inria in the development of its new Paris laboratory, specialising in artificial intelligence.
  • Orange and Inria have set up <I/O Lab> [FR], a joint research laboratory intended to strengthen their cooperation in the virtualisation of network functions and the convergence of communication networks and cloud computing.
  • Microsoft Research and Inria have announced the miTLS Internet security platform [FR] with the ultimate objective of creating a mathematically proven secure system to protect transactions over the Internet.

SMEs

  • In 2015, Inria established five Inria Innovation Labs jointly with SMEs with the aim of strengthening each company’s capacity of innovation by providing scientific support from an Inria research team.
  • The Inria Bordeaux -Sud-Ouest Centre has also signed a partnership agreement with Génération Robots for the distribution of Poppy.

Research organisations

  • IFP Energies Nouvelles and Inria have signed a framework agreement covering research into the application of high performance real time computing to energy technologies. The goal of the two organisations is the joint development of methodologies and algorithms resulting from computer science research in anticipation of the future needs of the industry.

In 2015, The Association of Carnot Institutes celebrated its tenth anniversary. Inria, a Carnot Institute since 2011, has joined in celebrating the close relationship between its research partnership strategy and the policy of innovation pursued by the Association of Carnot Institutes targeting the competitiveness development of businesses.

picto-accompagnementSupport

Once again this year, Inria has used its expertise to help businesses grow:

  • The Inria Lille – Nord research Centre has launched InriaTech, a technology transfer platform dedicated to reinforcing the synergies between the research and business worlds.
  • With over fifty SMEs supported in just four years, the HPC-SME Initiative launched jointly by Bpifrance, GENCI and Inria is already a success. Building on this success, the initiative will now be rolled out in other regions.
  • The Inria Rennes – Bretagne Atlantique research Centre has installed a tool intended to facilitate the use of applications developed by Inria by scientists, businesses and individuals. This is the AllGO platform.