Xavier
Niel

He is a self-taught entrepreneur and has worked in the Internet and telecommunications industry since the late 1980s. In 1993 he co-founded France’s first ISP, and in 1999 he created Free – France’s first free-access ISP.

He co-invented triple-play and the concept of the box, launching the Freebox in 2002 – a unique, state-of-the-art, multiservices box combining broadband Internet with telephony and television. Xavier has invested in telecom operators in a personal capacity in many countries outside France, including Switzerland, Ireland and Monaco.

In 2013, he founded “42”, a not-for-profit organization that delivers free coding training based on peer-to-peer learning. This training is available in a large number of countries and the network of “42" schools currently trains over 5,000 students worldwide. In 2017, the “42” school in Paris, France, was voted the best coding school in the world.

Xavier is also the founder of Station F – the world’s largest start-up campus – which opened its doors in 2017 and hosts a thousand start-ups in a former railway station in Paris occupying 34,000 sq.m. In november 2023, Xavier co-founded Kyutai – a non-profit, open science AI research lab based in Paris – alongside Rodolphe Saadé (Chairman and CEO of CMA CGM) and Eric Schmidt (former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Google).

Resolutely committed to the democratization of AI, Kyutai is positioning itself as a leading player in AI open science. Its ambition is to share its advances with the entire AI ecosystem – the scientific community, developers, companies, society at large and decision-makers in democracies.