AI Factory For AgriFood is the third class of the Microsoft AI Factory, after AI Factory for Green Energy and AI Factory for Health! The start-ups will be jointly supported by Microsoft and Danone, one of the world leadersin the agrifood sector, and will benefit from a 3-month acceleration period.
AI Factory for AgriFood for sustainable food and regenerative agriculture AI Factory, Microsoft's support program for start-ups specializing in Artificial Intelligence, is organized around 5 major economic and societal challenges: health, environment / energy, transportation, financial services and agrifood. The aim of the AI Factory for Agrifood is to accelerate the digital transformation of each sector and support these young companies to continue their development in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Realstartups accelerator, this program aims at being a co-innovation laboratory that links start-ups, world of research and various players in each sector.
"Our ambition is to help develop digital intelligence for healthy food and sustainable agriculture. This partnership with Danone will provide the selected applicants with in-depth expertise and personalized support, thus accelerating innovation throughout the agrifood sector," says Agnès Van de Walle, Director of the One Commercial Partner Entity at Microsoft France.
Thanks to these synergies, the AI Factory for Agrifood intends to encourage projects serving regenerative agriculture (soil health, animal welfare, support for farmers), sustainable food, waste minimization, and optimization of supply chains. A personalized support for an full ecosystem The AI Factory for Agrifood start-ups will benefit from Danone’s ‘One Planet. One Health’ vision, which links human health and the planet’s across its entire value chain. They will also benefit from access to real use cases under demanding real life conditions of quality and performance.
Microsoft will provide personalized support through its technological skills and the services of its Azure platform, as well as its sales network. Inria, the national research institute in digital sciences, France Digitale, FaberNovel, EIT Food and Seventure Partners are also teaming up alongside Microsoft and Danone and will intervene during the different stages of the program: AI start-upssourcing, selection process, coaching, among others, to bring their respective expertise.
"At Danone, we believe that artificial intelligence can contribute to the Food Revolution by improving our agricultural systems and our food’s value chains. That’s why we are very happy to launch this program with our partners at Microsoft: in a fundamental area such as food and agriculture, it is essential to encourage collaborative initiatives, knowledge sharing and the emergence of new, more inclusive and more sustainable solutions," says Cécile Cabanis, EVP, CFO, IS / IT, Danone Cycles & Procurement.