After 6 years of existence, the Be a Boss contest is one of France's reference events regarding women's entrepreneurship: 5 regional legs and a final in Paris in which women CEOs of all industries participate, not only tech startups. As an organization, Be a Boss' objective is triple: to boost entrepreneurship ambition among women, to identify the next big regional and national things, and to promote the most promising companies through awards and support programs.This year, among a turnover of more than 1,000 contenders, LEXISTEMS CEO Marie Granier was invited to compete, starting with France's Western Region round that took place in Nantes. After a series of keynotes and a semi-final featuring the seven best pitches, Marie was declared cowinner with Gabrielle Rodier, CEO of Switch Up, an innovative Business Mobility platform. Granier defended the case of data processing by meaning - LEXISTEMS' core technology - which earned her a majority (maybe all?) of the jurors' vote. Cowinning is part of the contest organization: each region sends two representatives to the final. In addition to the ticket to Paris, LEXISTEMS was awarded 30 k€ in national advertising space and a premium access to BPI financing programs. So let's all be there September 17 in Paris - fingers crossed!

While Vegas' Golden Knights unexpectedly lost 3-4 to Pittsburgh's Penguins in a much attended NHL home game, CES 2020 was the occasion for LEXISTEMS to demonstrate SensibleTV's new unique features to Altice Group, Orange, Comcast, Netflix, Disney and other major players in the M&E industry.In addition to meaning-based, conversational AI-models in 6 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), which gives LEXISTEMS solutions the ability to *really* understand people the way they speak, SensibleTV also showed off its fully GDPR-compliant unified interface (at the color and branding of a fictional telco) for TV programs, VOD contents and additional telco services. Full context management, total compatibility with Amazon's and Google's assistants, the possibility to offload part of the AI inference on the devices (STBs, TVs, etc.) as well as the ability to deploy and scale the solution entirely on a telco's infrastructure proved the most recurrent show stoppers. Be ready for SensibleTV in your home very soon...

It is not unusual for Leyton, the international consultancy specialized in government funding and support for innovation, to invite high potential customers to privilege events. But this time the occasion was very special: Leyton (the racing boat) was taking the start of the 2019 "Transat Jacques Vabre" from Le Havre to Salvador de Bahia, and Leyton (the Board of Directors) had chartered a yacht to cheer and support their famous skippers - Sam Goodchild and Fabien Delahaye - off the virtual start line already high at sea.In addition to an exclusive tour of the 12.2m, 300m² sail area racer prior to the big day, the weekend was the occasion for Leyton and LEXISTEMS to strenghten their relationship, in a networking environment where the business press was also in large representation. LEXISTEMS CEO Marie Granier (and spouse) spent a lot of time with institutional representatives and media directors, which paves to way to more awareness about LEXISTEMS' foreseeable bright future.We decided to wait for the end of the race to release this news. Smart move: Leyton ended second in the Class 40 category, in 18 days and 0 hours, just 8 hours after Crédit Mutuel but with several speed record matches along the way in a constant sail to sail pressure. Un grand Bravo to Goodchild, Delahaye and Leyton!

Same show, 12 months later! One year ago, IBC 2018 saw LEXISTEMS introduce SensibleTV^®, the ultimate vocal interface to search, find and consume TV programs, VOD contents and additional services in true natural language, in several languages. Compared to existing solutions, the leap in performance, simplicity and user empowerment was noticed by the industry, leading to a number of partnerships among worldwide telcos, content providers and middleware designers.A wealth of world's premiere functionalitiesThis year, SensibleTV strengthens its technological advance with 3x more powerful AI models enabling the Graal in user interfaces: full context management and similarity inferences. Let's say you ask SensibleTV a simple question like "Find me the best family flicks with dogs this weekend". You get them instantly, aggregated from your VOD services like Netflix and the channels in your TV plan. Now say "and with cats or bees but not horses". Tada! You get new results, instantly refined, just matching your wishes. Of course, this applies to any kind of program features like actors (or directors, musicians, etc.), channels or services, broadcast time, and so on.Another example of SensibleTV's new superpowers is similarity inference. This serves instant results for queries like "I wanna see the best series like Friends that take place in New-York City". In conjunction with context management, change your mind and ask "or in Los Angeles" then "and like Law and Order". Voilà: you've got what you wanted. It's as simple as that, whatever the language used among those supported by SensibleTV, because SensibleTV works by meaning - not by keywords like its competition does.Fruitful demosThis was demonstrated on Sagemcom's elegant booth with Sagemcom's brand new devices and STBs, in both far-field (ambiant listening) and near-field (user-triggered listening from the remote) modes. Other demonstrations included implementations with or without already installed vocal assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, as well as a prototype SensibleTV mobile app to pilot TV/VOD devices and services from your phone. Which, logically, led to new marks of interest among other majors in the industry, some of whom are currently becoming new LEXISTEMS partners...

Getting the EC's Seal of Excellence is no small feat in itself, but getting it upon initial proposal of a project is something quite rare, especially for a startup. LEXISTEMS is accordingly very proud to receive it for its SensibleTV solution (TV and VOD by Meaning), which is thereby deemed Excellent from both technology and market standpoints, and therefore ready for large-scale commercial deployment all over Europe and beyond.But what exactly is the Seal of Excellence? The Commission presents it as a quality label awarded to the best projects submitted to the EU's "H2020" Research and Innovation programme, in order to help funding bodies take advantage of the programme's highly competitive, 360° Evaluation process. The Seal of Excellence shows political commitment by displaying the signature of the Commissioners. It is digitally sealed against fraud, as is the evaluation summary report.In other words, the Commission recognizes the value of LEXISTEMS SensibleTV and validates the benefits it brings to services and contents providers (Telcos, VOD services...) as well as their end users. In addition to protecting data privacy by design - which is unique on the market - SensibleTV brings real-life understanding to devices, assistants and applications, and therefore true user empowerment in a home entertainment context. That's because SensibleTV is based on LEXISTEMS' Sensible.ai^® technology, which processes data by meaning. Compared to GAFAMs' solutions, which are all based on keywords, SensibleTV is a quantum leap in performance and ease of use, kind of like switching directly from 3G to 5G.

On April 8, 2019, the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on AI presented its Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, following the publication of the Guidelines' first draft in December 2018 on which more than 500 comments were received through an open consultation.Now that the time has come for practicality, LEXISTEMS has been selected by the AI HLEG to participate in shaping the Guidelines' Trustworthy AI Assessment List, and more specifically to help define its application to the Telecommunications & Media sector.This is both a significant institutional recognition and an important cause to defend for LEXISTEMS, whose mission, as publisher of the Sensible.ai^® technology (Data by Meaning), includes a fundamental ethics dimension.In all its products derived from the Sensible.ai technology, LEXISTEMS promotes total data security and privacy by design. In effect, LEXISTEMS solutions, among which SensibleData^® and SensibleTV^®, rely on controllable components and do not hijack users or contents data. At all. They allow customers to run applications on their own premises / infrastructure, thereby preventing any code or data excursion to remote clouds of foreign, national interest-based jurisdiction.Far from just being a market positioning motto, this unique "Ethics by Design" approach carries numerous engineering and industrial requirements. These are precisely what LEXISTEMS intends to submit to the HLEG so that everyone in Europe, and possibly beyond, can rest assured that their everyday AIs are fully respectful of applicable laws and ethical values.

LEXISTEMS is now ranked within the Top 20 of startups by EarlyMetrics, the Rating Agency for Innovative SMEs, whose mission is to assess the growth potential of innovation ventures. "In addition to validating LEXISTEMS' growth strategy, this ranking helps LEXISTEMS customers, partners and investors better appreciate the company's achievements and objectives, which in turn brings trust and opportunities" said Marie Granier, LEXISTEMS CEO, upon receiving the post-rating report.EarlyMetric's screening and analysis process covers 50 dimensions that characterize the current stage of a startup's development, including technologies, products, market adequation, human resources, cash flow, etc. To guarantee independence and neutrality, the evaluation is free of charge, which is why EarlyMetrics' audience is growing quarter after quarter among incubators, accelerators, media and other key ecosystem players.

Can anyone imagine Boeing storing its data on a European Cloud? Or a Chinese law enforcement agency using a European software platform to analyze its big data? No, of course. And yet, that is frequently happening in Europe. A number of European companies and administrations choose to rely on non-European technologies for strategic activities and data processing - mainly AI-based - even though competitive alternatives of European origin and jurisdiction do exist. Should we try and do something about it? Probably, if only to secure the future of Europe's data and digital sovereignty. That was the topic of the conference that took place at the prestigious Hotel de L'Industrie in Paris.After Mr Villani, France's famous mathematician, Fields Medal recipient and now representative of the 5th Essones constituency, articulated the key takeaways from his government-mandated Report on Artificial Intelligence, the consensus among participants was clear. Europe has the economic means and intellectual resources to compete equally with the two other blocks. What we lack is an artificial intelligence strategy at European level.It is in this context that LEXISTEMS CEO Marie Granier, among other European AI companies' executives, pleaded again for the implementation of regulations similar to the American Patriot and Cloud Acts - or their Chinese implicit equivalents - and their application to AI at EU level. Everyone agrees that this is the mandatory bootstrap of a virtuous circle of funding, innovation, growth and autonomy in AI, with the ultimate objective to preserve our common economy, defense and culture. At the end of the conference, there was no doubt among attendees that artificial intelligence is both an industrial revolution, a change of civilization and an opportunity for Europe - should the authorities start to act on it.

Marie Granier, LEXISTEMS CEO, today accepted the function of Vice-President of Operation Lancelot, a non-profit initiative and businesses cluster to promote action for the protection of Europe's data and related assets at the ecosystem and institutional levels. Among participants are Qwant, Whaller, YooCan, DataValoris and others.Operation Lancelot is born from the observation that the new digital civilization impacts Europe's sovereignty at three levels: sovereignty over personal and business data, political sovereignty over a cyber-territory that is no longer geography-bound, and economic sovereignty in a global economic world. At the same time, the idea that control over our digital fate would already be split between the USA and China couldn't be more wrong. Dedicated regulations can still be passed and enforced. But nothing can be achieved if not at European level and scale.To that effect, Operation Lancelot will define a Digital Sovereignty Pact with commitments to be endorsed by officials and representatives. These commitments all revolve around the notion that protecting European data requires competitive European data technologies. For effectiveness, they will aim at creating business value, establishing european values as standards for digital ethics, and allowing for societal participation in the decision-making when it comes to fundamental digital questions. Marie Granier will be in charge of overseeing the promotion of this agenda for all matters regarding Artificial Intelligence.

CES is definitely the place to be when you have a truly disruptive digital innovation to introduce. After IBC in Amsterdam last September, this year's CES in Las Vegas was the occasion for LEXISTEMS to further demonstrate SensibleTV^®, its TV and VOD by Meaning solution, and prove its technological and business benefits compared to all the GAFAMs' keywords-based offerings combined.SensibleTV empowers users by enabling true natural language interactions with TVs, set-top boxes and VOD services. Equipped with SensibleTV, systems and applications really understand users, like in real life, and therefore deliver better results with more contents. SensibleTV does not, by design, capture any content or user data, and it allows customers to run applications entirely on their premises / infrastructure, thereby protecting assets and margins. Who can say the same among today's digital assistants?That is why LEXISTEMS, whose presence was kindly hosted on Sagemcom's private booth at The Venetian, was a must stop during the now famous "Telco Tour", a first-day event that gathers CTOs and CMOs from the worldwide telecom operators / M&E industries. It was an opportunity for LEXISTEMS to show SensibleTV to Comcast, Bell, Altice US and France, Orange, Netflix and others, a number of whom later came back for further private demos and business discussions. To be continued...