Support l'X French Minister of the Armed Forces announces the construction of a Defense Institute on École Polytechnique’s campus
On the right : Sébastien Lecornu ; on theleft : Bertrand Rondepierre, Laura Chaubard et Emmanuel Chiva, CEO of French Defense Procurement Agency
During a visit to École Polytechnique to inaugurate the Research Center of the Ministerial Agency for Artificial Intelligence in Defense (MAAID), Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, announced a 15 million euro investment in the construction of a Defense Institute on the School’s campus.
“This new building will serve as a bridge between the Ministry of the Armed Forces and École Polytechnique, thus reaffirming the latter's militarity”, said the Minister.
“Since 2020, the School has considerably strengthened its ties with the defense sector, in all its areas of activity. I am delighted by the creation of this defense institute, which will bring together mixed teams of engineers and scientists around technologies critical to our sovereignty, such as AI, cyber or quantum technologies. It will be an essential link in the innovation chain for our armed forces”, declared Laura Chaubard, Director General of École Polytechnique.
During his previous visit to École Polytechnique, the Minister of the Armed Forces announced in March 2024 the creation of the MAAID and the establishment of its research center on the campus.
“The new MIAAD research center has three main objectives. The first is to foster the development of defense AI in conjunction with the civilian ecosystem and synergies with the academic world. The second is to attract young talent to artificial intelligence applied to defense, and the third is to strengthen the reputation of the Ministry of the Armed Forces by contributing to international reference publications”, the Ministry of the Armed Forces points out in a press release.
On the occasion of this inauguration, Bertrand Rondepierre (X2010), Director of the MAAID, signed a memorandum of understanding with Guillaume Lample (X2011), Scientific Director and co-founder of French leader in generative AI Mistral AI, in the presence of the Minister. MAAID and Mistral AI have thus initiated a strategic rapprochement in the field of defense artificial intelligence.
“The aim of this future partnership is to ensure the technological leadership and sovereignty of French defense, by developing cutting-edge technologies with Mistral AI,” says the press release.
Sébastien Lecornu had affirmed France's ambition to take “the lead in artificial intelligence in Europe”, during his opening speech at the cycle of conferences dedicated to AI in the defense field on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit held in Paris from February 6 to 11, 2025.
As part of this summit, École Polytechnique hosted an international scientific conference on artificial intelligence on February 6 and 7, bringing together several thousand participants for round-table discussions with prestigious speakers such as France's Yann LeCun (Meta) and Joëlle Barral (Google DeepMind).