Remi Chauveau Notes
A former rail depot on Paris’s Left Bank has become Europe’s most ambitious tech ecosystem, where Station F blends innovation, culture, and responsible AI to shape the continent’s next generation of global companies.
Technology 🚀

Station F: Europe’s Silicon Valley, Reimagined 🇪🇺

22 June 2025
@bfmtech 3 startups qui cartonnent dans I'IA en France pour Xavier Niel #free #ia #elonmusk #investir ♬ son original - BFM Tech

Code Flow: The Minds Behind “Software”

Code Flow — the collective behind the track Software — crafts music designed as a soundtrack for work, deep study, and long coding sessions, building each piece from hypnotic loops and atmospheric textures that remove distraction without losing rhythmic pulse. Inspired by Detroit minimal techno and the softness of European ambient, their sound creates a clean, steady environment where the mind can sink into complex tasks, perfect for mental flow, late‑night programming, or meditative productivity. The project is shaped by its members working together: Cristian Rosario on string instruments and studio work, and Cristian Miguel Rosario as lyricist and composer — all forming the unified creative identity of Code Flow.

🎶 🎸 🏙️ 🌞 📀 💡 🧿 🌺 🇫🇷 🌱 ✨ 🚀 🎧 🏛️ 🤖 🔊

[HELLO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ WORLD ] - Software by Code Flow




“We don’t copy Silicon Valley—we invent our own model.” “On ne copie pas la Silicon Valley, on invente notre propre modèle.”

With that declaration, Xavier Niel set the tone for what Station F would become when it opened in 2017. He wasn’t trying to transplant a Californian blueprint onto French soil; he was pursuing something more rooted, more civic‑minded, more European.

🏛️ A New Kind of Tech Capital

Inside a converted rail depot on Paris’s Left Bank, Station F has become the most ambitious experiment in European innovation. Rather than mimicking Silicon Valley, the campus embraces a distinctly French model—publicly supported, culturally confident, and built on the belief that technology should elevate society. The result is a dense, self‑sustaining ecosystem where founders, engineers, and researchers work side by side to build the next generation of global tech and AI companies.

🚀 A Launchpad for Europe’s Breakout Startups

Station F’s impact is already visible across Europe. Doctolib, now one of the continent’s most valuable health‑tech companies, refined its early product inside these walls. Alan, the digital health insurer reshaping European coverage, grew here as well. Yuka, the food‑scanning app that changed how millions shop, built its first major user base on campus. Zenly, the social‑mapping app later acquired by Snap, emerged from the same environment. These alumni have turned Station F into a symbol of French tech’s global rise.

🤖 The New European AI Hotspot

AI has become Station F’s defining frontier. The campus hosts dozens of emerging AI companies—from enterprise automation to creative‑model tooling to ethical‑AI infrastructure—supported by France’s world‑class research institutions like INRIA and École Polytechnique. The broader Paris ecosystem has also produced Mistral AI, now one of the world’s most closely watched AI challengers. Station F’s philosophy stands apart from Silicon Valley’s break‑things‑fast ethos; here, founders are encouraged to build quickly but responsibly, with long‑term societal impact in mind.

🌐 A City Within a City

What makes Station F unique is its scale and its intentional design. The campus functions like a miniature city for entrepreneurs, complete with a makerspace, a 24/7 restaurant, and on‑site housing for founders. Programs from Meta, Ubisoft, LVMH, HEC Paris, and Microsoft create constant cross‑pollination between industries. This environment has produced companies like Lydia, the mobile‑payments app used by millions, and Agricool, the urban‑farming startup rethinking food production. Even hardware teams—robotics labs, drone manufacturers, IoT builders—find a natural home in the building’s industrial architecture.

🌍 Paris Steps Into the Global Arena

Station F has helped transform Paris into one of Europe’s fastest‑growing tech capitals, attracting record investment and global talent. Government support through La French Tech and generous R&D incentives has accelerated the shift, but the ethos remains unmistakably Parisian: ambitious yet grounded, innovative yet human‑centered, global yet proudly local. Station F isn’t trying to become Silicon Valley—it’s building something more sustainable, more European, and increasingly more influential. As its alumni scale into global powerhouses, the world is beginning to understand that Europe’s next tech giants may very well be born in Paris.



#ParisTech 🚀 #StationF 🌍 #EuropeanInnovation 🧠 #FutureOfAI 🤖 #FrenchTech 🇫🇷

Underground Culture

The Freyssinet Night‑Shift Sessions
One of Station F’s most unusual internal traditions is that its earliest founders used to meet informally at night in the building’s old maintenance tunnels—a leftover from the Halle Freyssinet’s industrial past. Before the campus became the polished, hyper‑organized ecosystem it is today, these tunnels were a kind of unofficial “backstage” where founders exchanged ideas, debugged prototypes, and even negotiated early partnerships away from the noise of the main hall. It never became an official program, but the spirit of those underground sessions shaped the culture: Station F was built to be porous, improvisational, and collaborative long before it became a global symbol of French tech. Even today, some teams still refer to breakthrough moments as “tunnel ideas,” a quiet nod to the building’s raw, pre‑launch days.

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