Parisian startup hub Station F is gearing up for the second batch of its F/ai accelerator program. The goal is simple: help AI startups go from early product to real revenue in weeks, not years.
Station F is massive — 538,000 square feet — but director Roxanne Varza says its real footprint goes beyond the physical space. Their Future 40 program picks the most promising teams from about 1,000 companies that cycle through each year. In 2024, nearly every startup in that cohort had AI at its core.
The first F/ai batch was backed by a who’s who of tech: AMD, Anthropic, AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and others. The second cohort adds Eleven Labs, Rippling, OpenRouter, HubSpot, GitHub, and more. Varza’s pitch: bring all the major players together so European AI startups can connect with them easily.
The results so far are solid. First cohort companies collectively raised $34 million in pre-seed funding. 80% were founded by repeat entrepreneurs. Two teams already won international recognition — Alpic won The Pitch global finale, and Rippletide won the OpenAI Codex Hackathon.
The accelerator targets €1 million (about $1.14 million) in revenue within six months for each startup. “We’d heard quite a bit of criticism about the slow pace of commercialization of European startups,” Varza said. “This brings them on par with what investors are seeing in the US.”
Applications for the September cohort are open now.
