As the chairman of CMA CGM, one of the largest container shipping companies in the world, Rodolphe Saade is investing heavily in ventures outside of the company’s core business. This includes building a media division and an air cargo business, as well as foraying into artificial intelligence.
One of Saade’s latest ventures is Kyutai, an open scientific laboratory for artificial intelligence that he co-founded with Eric Schmidt and Xavier Neal. The lab is dedicated to open artificial intelligence research and aims to solve some of the main challenges facing modern AI. Kyutai plans to develop large multimodal models and invent new algorithms to improve their capacity, reliability and efficiency.
Kyutai has already received almost €300 million in investment from a variety of sources including Niel’s iliad Group, CMA CGM, and Schmidt Futures. The lab will use computing power made available by Scaleway, part of Niel’s technology empire, which has some of the highest performance computing power for AI applications in Europe.
Saade expressed his desire for the younger generation to take advantage of the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence through Kyutai. He emphasized that by democratizing AI and sharing its progress with the entire AI ecosystem, France and Europe can become leaders in this field and create a dynamic and innovative ecosystem for businesses to be competitive.