Events

Co-organised with the Adopt AI Summit team, the Paris edition of the European Defense Tech Hackathon puts technologists, operators, investors and the public sector in the same room for a weekend. Challenges include drone interception, target tracking across sensor networks and communications that survive jamming.

Teams form on Friday, build on Saturday and demo on Sunday from 1 pm, when visitors are welcome. Hacker tickets require approval, mentor spots are by invitation. The organisers push the best teams toward real deployment.

Part of the Adopt AI Summit, this hackathon brings student teams of four to eight together with defense stakeholders and quantum experts on challenges shaped by a call for ideas at the France Quantum Summit. More than 100 participants and ten teams are expected.

Selected teams get mentoring from October to November, then a final sprint, testing sessions and an awards ceremony at the Grand Palais in December. Open to engineering students with an interest in quantum computing and defense.

Two tracks: navigation and mobility in hostile terrain (autonomous navigation, localisation, mapping) and precision handling and logistics (manipulation, automated logistics). Six challenges in total, tackled by student teams of four to eight.

Teams get technical mentoring in November to master the simulator, then test their solutions on physical robots during the three days in December. €3,000 per track. Partners include Naval Group, Wandercraft, GIGN and Unaite, which co-runs the event. Applications close on 30 September.

Four challenges: detect and characterise information threats, respond to ongoing campaigns, prepare citizens cognitively against disinformation, and build sustainable citizen monitoring networks. More than 100 students from the grandes écoles in teams of four to eight.

Registration and team formation in September, selection in October, mentoring by cybersecurity and AI experts in November, then the final sprint, testing and awards at the Grand Palais in December. €3,000 per challenge, with Thales, Atos, Inria, Viginum and the CNIL among the partners.

Forty builders, ten teams, one app each, submitted to the App Store through App Store Connect by the end of the challenge. Teams of three or four mix engineers, who build the product, and business profiles, who test the idea with users, set the positioning and pricing and prepare the launch and the final pitch. New ideas and existing projects are both welcome.

The programme: kick-off at Apple on Thursday 9 October from 5 to 8 pm, where solo builders can also form teams, then two build days at MWM in Boulogne-Billancourt on 15 and 16 October. Apple engineers support the teams on their platforms (Apple Intelligence and Foundation Models, on-device models, Siri and App Intents, StoreKit), MWM brings product, growth and monetisation expertise from publishing apps at scale, and cmd+F provides experienced Apple developers. The point is a product that lasts, with support that continues after the two days.

Apply as a complete team on Luma, every member individually with the same team name, or alone with a project or just the will to build. Bring a Mac with Apple Silicon. Deadline Sunday 4 October at 23:59, Paris time; places are limited and applications are reviewed.

Welcome at 6:30 pm, a keynote on Mistral's latest models, Vibe and tool-using workflows with MCP, then two hours to build something in teams of two or three with mentors around. Pizza at 8:30, submissions, a jury shortlist and six final pitches.

Prizes are Mistral credits and gift cards for the top three teams, and every participant leaves with credits and merch. Fifty seats, approval on LinkedIn and GitHub profiles.

How should political and economic strategies on AI be decided during an election period? Unaite, the federation of AI student clubs, hosts a roundtable at Paris Dauphine on disinformation, algorithmic bias, influence on public opinion, regulation and the environmental cost of AI.

On stage: Cornelia Perle (DemNet, formerly Council of Europe), David Mas (Chief AI Officer, Make.org), Alex Issa (ESSEC) and Eline Vivet Maladry (Paris Cité). 7 to 9 pm, approval required.

With the startup SkyDot, datacraft sets a concrete challenge: a pipeline that understands an unknown scanned form, finds what is asked, fetches the answers from structured company data and writes them in the right place, skew and bad scans included.

The method is iterative, prototype, test, analyse errors, refine the instructions, and the day ends with a comparison of strategies across participants. Bring your own LLM API access. Registration is approved by the hosts.

The second edition brings machine learning people and lawyers together in cross-disciplinary teams. The brief: a working prototype that solves a real problem of legal work, with trustworthy AI at the core.

Mistral AI and Stanford Law School's Rhode Center run the day, with Legora, Sciences Po Law School, HEC IA and Hector AI mentoring. A good place to show what you can do at the intersection of models and law. Approval required.