Guillaume Avrin steps down as National AI Coordinator and joins Arlequin AI as Chief Go-to-Market & Public Sector Officer

An engineer graduated from CentraleSupélec and Arts et Métiers, and a doctor in robotics and neurosciences, Guillaume Avrin led the mobilization of over 1.5 billion euros in public investments to accelerate the transformation of the French AI landscape. Under his leadership, the national strategy for artificial intelligence was structured around the entire value chain: infrastructure, research, talent training, innovation, evaluation, adoption, and regulation.

His tenure resulted in a series of notable advances: support for the emergence of national champions in generative AI, doubling the number of AI startups in three years, strengthening public computing capacities with the launch of the Alice Recoque supercomputer and the expansion of Jean Zay, as well as more than 130 million euros dedicated to digital commons. Under his leadership, France climbed the ranks of international rankings, reaching 5th place in the Global AI Index and 3rd in the Stanford AI Vibrancy Ranking, affirming its position as a European leader in research, training, and infrastructure.

Founded in 2024 by Hugo Micheron and Antoine Jardin, Arlequin AI develops HuDEx (Human Data Explorer), a sovereign intelligence and data operation platform at the crossroads of data science, generative AI, and social sciences. Its goal is to enable decision-makers, both public and private, to decipher weak signals, map social dynamics, and anticipate transformations of the informational space, across the web and social networks.

Contrary to traditional approaches focused on the raw exploitation of data or decision automation, Arlequin offers a hybrid framework, where the computational power of large language models (LLM) is used for strategic understanding.

With a 4.4 million euro seed funding last month, led by French and German funds (Vsquared Ventures, 10x Founders, Kima Ventures, Better Angle) as well as business angels from the deeptech sector, Arlequin AI displays a decidedly cross-border positioning. A choice assumed by its founders, who see it as the foundation of a collective response capacity to the geostrategic, technological, and cognitive challenges posed by AI in an increasingly fragmented world.

Guillaume Avrin will be tasked with leading all the startup's Go-to-Market activities: business development, offer structuring, strategic partnerships, public affairs, and positioning with major contractors, both public and private. He will enable the young company not only to gain visibility and commercial traction but also to position itself as a key player in the European ecosystem of sovereign AI.

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