Viva Technology, or VivaTech, is an annual technology conference, dedicated to innovation and startups, held in Paris, France. VivaTech was founded in 2016 by

Publicis Groupe Publicis Groupe S.A. is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. As of 2024, the company is the largest advertising company in the world by revenue. Based in Paris, it is one of the 'Big Four' advertising commpanies, al ...

and Groupe Les Echos. The first two days of VivaTech are for startups, investors, executives, students and academics, and it is open to the general public on the third day.

2016

The first year of VivaTech was held from 30 June to 2 July 2016 in Paris, and gathered 45,000 visitors including 5,000 startup companies."Emmanuel Macron's Call to Action: Viva Technology!"
, ''Forbes'', 18 June 2017

2017

In 2017, VivaTech was held at Paris expo Porte de Versailles from 14 to 16 June in Paris. In attendance were 6,000 startup firms, 1,400 investors, and 1,500 journalists. French President

Emmanuel Macron Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...

delivered the keynote address and announced the creation of a 10-billion Euro fund for innovation and the launch of a French technology visa for international entrepreneurs. One thousand startups were exhibited in 20 open innovation "labs" sponsored by corporate groups ( AccorHotels,

Air France Air France (; legally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France, and is headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. The airline is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and is one of the founding members ...

, KLM,

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

, BNPP, La Poste,

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

Engie Engie SA (stylised in all caps as ENGIE) is a French multinational electric utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie. Its activities cover electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear power, renewable energy ...

Carrefour Carrefour Group, S.A. (, ), is a French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation headquartered in Massy, Essonne, Massy, France. It operates a chain of hypermarkets, grocery stores and convenience stores. By 2024, the group had 14,000 ...

, LVMH,

RATP Group The RATP Group () is a French state-owned enterprise (Établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial, EPIC) that operates public transport systems primarily in Paris, France. Headquartered in Paris, it originally operated under th ...

SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (, , SNCF ) is France's national State-owned enterprise, state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the Rail transport in France, country's national rail traffic along with th ...

Sodexo Sodexo (formerly Sodexho Alliance) is a French food services and facilities management company headquartered in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux. It has 522,000 employees as of 2023, operates in 55 countries and serves 100 million custome ...

Sanofi Sanofi S.A. is a French Multinational corporation, multinational pharmaceutical and healthcare company headquartered in Paris, France. The corporation was established in 1973 and merged with Synthélabo in 1999 to form Sanofi-Synthélabo. In 200 ...

, Orange,

TF1 TF1 (; standing for ''Télévision Française 1'') is a French commercial television network owned by TF1 Group, controlled by the Bouygues conglomerate. TF1's average market share of 24% makes it the most popular domestic network. TF1 is part ...

, Talan, Pari mutuel urbain, Vinci Energies,

Valeo Valeo is a French global automotive supplier headquartered in France, listed on the Paris Stock Exchange ( CAC Next 20 Index). It supplies a wide range of products to automakers and the aftermarket. The Group employs 113,600 people in 29 countri ...

). Speakers including

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

, Daniel Zhang and John Collison were also in attendance.

2018

In 2018, VivaTech took place from 24 to 26 May in Paris. Over 100,000 visitors and over 300 speakers attended the third edition of the event including

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

Satya Nadella Satya Narayana Nadella (; born 19 August 1967) is an Indian-born American business executive who is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. B ...

, Dara Khosrowshahi, Ginni Rometty,

Chuck Robbins Charles H. Robbins (born 1965 or 1966) is an American businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. Early life Robbins was born in Grayson, Georgia, and educated at Rocky Mount High School in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. In 1987, he ...

and Bill McDermott. French President Emmanuel Macron returned to VivaTech in 2018 and announced that the French government will launch a R900 million-programme aimed at investing in African startups. A partnership was established with

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

and the Startup Battlefield, a competition for startups where the winners attended the Startup Battlefield finals in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in September 2018.

2019

In 2019, the fourth edition of the event was marked by a trend towards positive innovation ("tech for good") as well as the presence of 124,000 visitors at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, on 16 and 17 May for professionals, and on 18 May for the general public. Nearly 13,000 startups were present, as well as 450 prominent figures from all over the world, such as

Jack Ma Ma Yun (; born 10 September 1964), or more commonly referred as Jack Ma, is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of the Jack Ma Foundation, and co-founder of Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital. As of May 2025, Ma's ne ...

Alibaba Group Alibaba Group Holding Limited, branded as Alibaba (), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in E-commerce in China, e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzho ...

, Justin Trudeau, Olympic medallist

Usain Bolt Usain St. Leo Bolt (; born 21 August 1986) is a Jamaican retired sprinter who is widely regarded as the greatest sprinter of all time. He is an eight-time Olympic gold medalist and the world record holder in the 100 metres, 200 metres, ...

, Holly Ridings of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, Ken Hu of

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

, Young Sohn of

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the Presidency of Barack Obama#Administration, administration of Barac ...

and

Margrethe Vestager Margrethe Vestager (; born 13 April 1968) is a Denmark, Danish politician who formerly served as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age between December 2019 and November 2024 in the Von Der Leye ...

2021

In 2021, the fifth edition of the event was marked by a trend towards Positive change through technology at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles and online, on 16, 17 and 18 June. Prominent figures from all over the world were present, such as

Tim Cook Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who is the current chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Cook had previously been the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs. Cook joined ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, Peggy Johnson of Magic Leap, Eric Yuan of Zoom,

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

, Melissa Bell of CNN,

and Fionn Ferreira

2022

In June 2022, for the sixth edition of VivaTech, 91,000 visitors were recorded, an attendance which remains lower than the figures before Covid.

2023

In June 2023, for the seventh edition of VivaTech, big names in global tech are expected such as

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...

, head of Tesla,

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and Yann LeCun, chief scientist of Meta's AI department. The President of the French Republic

is going there again. Bernard Arnault, president of LVMH, as well as Dan Schulman, president of

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, and Christel Heydemann, general manager of Orange, are among the speakers. The edition reached a record by attracting more than 150,000 visitors over the entire duration of the event, almost 60,000 more than during the previous edition. The number of visitors to Viva Tech thus exceeds for the year 2023 that of CES, a benchmark show in the field of new technologies, organized each year in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

2024

The eight edition of VivaTech was held from 22 to 25 May at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, and attracted more than 165,000 visitors, from 160+ nationalities, over the four days of the event, setting another attendance record.

virtually attended vivatech and shared his personal vision as well as the advances made by his companies in the field of Artificial Intelligence, which have been the subject of much debate. Japan was honored as the country of the year.

References

External links

* {{Official website Exhibitions in France Technology conferences Business conferences