A two-day summit on enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence, organised by the Paris consultancy Artefact at the Grand Palais; the next edition runs 3 and 4 December 2026 across eight sector tracks, from health and finance to defence and industry, and is built for organisations already deploying AI rather than for those evaluating it.
Adopt AI is an annual summit on the corporate adoption of artificial intelligence, held at the Grand Palais in Paris and organised by Artefact, a Paris-headquartered data and AI consulting and engineering firm with around 1,700 staff across 25 countries. Its stated position is downstream of policy: where the AI Action Summit held in Paris in February 2025 addressed governance and international commitments, Adopt AI addresses what organisations actually deploy, with programming organised by industry rather than by technology. The 2026 edition runs 3 and 4 December 2026 and is structured around eight sector tracks: AI for Health, AI for Finance, AI for Industry, AI for Defence, AI for Retail, AI for Travel, AI for Sport and AI for Planet. The French press has called it the "Davos of AI", a label the organiser repeats. It is held under the patronage of the President of the French Republic. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and artefact.com/events/adopt-ai-grand-palais-paris/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Adopt AI 2026 runs Thursday 3 and Friday 4 December 2026, two days. The venue is the Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the same venue as the previous edition. The 2025 edition ran 25 and 26 November 2025, so the 2026 edition sits roughly a week later in the calendar. Daily opening hours for 2026 were not published in the sources reachable on this pass. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and grandpalais.fr, consulted 18 September 2026.
Adopt AI is organised by Artefact, a data and AI consultancy and engineering firm headquartered in Paris, which employs around 1,700 people across 25 countries and has run large AI events for roughly a decade. The named leads are Vincent Luciani, Artefact co-founder and executive chairman, who acts as conference director, Philippine Levey as events and communications director, and Damien Gromier as director of events, reachable at contact@startupinside.com. That an event of this scale is run by a consultancy rather than by a trade fair organiser or a media group is the structural fact worth knowing: the programme reflects a practitioner consultancy's view of what enterprises are actually deploying, and the consultancy's own client relationships sit behind a good part of the speaker roster. Source: adoptai.artefact.com, artefact.com and the database contact record, consulted 18 September 2026.
The organiser expects 25,000 participants at the 2026 edition. The 2025 edition drew 20,000 participants with more than 1,300 CEOs and around 500 speakers, and President Emmanuel Macron attended. Note that figures of "more than 25,000 participants" also circulate for the 2025 edition; the 20,000 figure is the one held in the event record and is used here, and the discrepancy is discussed in the press-reliability entry below (unverifiable information). The audience is executive-weighted: chief executives, chief information and chief data officers, innovation directors, and sector leaders from large French and European corporates, alongside startup founders, scale-ups, public-sector decision-makers and the AI vendor and cloud community. This is not a developer conference and does not present itself as one. Source: adoptai.artefact.com, artefact.com/ressource-document/report-ceo-stage-adopt-ai-grand-palais-2025/ and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
The clearest change is the addition of AI for Defence to the sector track list, which in the 2025 edition ran without it; the 2026 track list is Health, Finance, Industry, Defence, Retail, Travel, Sport and Planet. The edition also moves from late November to 3 and 4 December. Beyond that, no published 2026 programme change, new format or new venue arrangement was found in the sources reachable on this pass, and the 2026 speaker roster had not been published as of 18 September 2026. A returning attendee should expect the same structure, CEO Stage, MasterClass Stage, Startup Stage, demo zone and a hackathon, unless the organiser announces otherwise. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/programme-global and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
The programme is organised by sector rather than by technology, across eight tracks: AI for Health, AI for Finance, AI for Industry, AI for Defence, AI for Retail, AI for Travel, AI for Sport and AI for Planet, with cross-cutting content on business transformation, skills and new technologies. The 2026 speaker list had not been published as of 18 September 2026. The 2025 roster gives the measure of what to expect: around 500 speakers, of whom more than 50 were chief executives, including Guillaume Faury (Airbus), Alexandre Bompard (Carrefour), Christel Heydemann (Orange), Patrick Pouyanné (TotalEnergies), Nicolas Namias (Natixis), Paul Hudson (Sanofi), Estelle Brachlianoff (Veolia), Sophie Bellon (Sodexo), Bernard Fontana, Olivier Gavalda, Christophe Périllat, Marie-Christine Lombard, Stéphane Pallez, Guillaume Texier, Dirk Hoke, Hans De Cuyper, Alexander Vollert, Thomas Mackenbrock, Benoît Coquart, Olivier Laureau, Olivier Sichel, Ahmad O. Al Khowaiter, Nabil Al Nuaim, Najwa Aaraj, Éric Petitgand, Marie-Aude Thépaut and Bruno Vaffier; institutional figures including David Amiel, Pascal Cagni and Roland Lescure; and AI industry executives including Vincent Luciani (Artefact), Howard Wright (Microsoft), Tanuja Randery (AWS), Sriram Raghavan (IBM), Jonas Andrulis (Aleph Alpha), Alexander Rinke (Celonis), Florian Douetteau (Dataiku), Emilie Sidiqian, Luc Dammann, Julien Billot, Guillaume Princen and Jean-Philippe Desbiolles. That list is the 2025 published roster, not a 2026 confirmation. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/programme-global and the 2025 CEO Stage report, consulted 18 September 2026.
Six formats are documented. The CEO Stage carries chief executive keynotes and is the event's signature. The MasterClass Stage runs instructional sessions. The Startup Stage gives early-stage companies a platform. A demo zone puts working systems in front of attendees rather than slides. A drone hackathon runs as a competitive format. A VIP networking lounge serves the executive tier. The event also runs an international short film competition as its awards format. Unlike most events of this size, the record shows B2B matchmaking and advance meeting scheduling are both available, and session replay access is offered, which makes it one of the better-instrumented AI events in EMEA for a buyer who needs meetings rather than talks. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/programme-global-stages- and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Not separately documented. The drone hackathon, the demo zone and the short film competition run inside the event rather than alongside it, and no independent fringe programme, satellite conference or Paris-wide AI week around the 3 and 4 December dates was found in the sources reachable on this pass. Partner organisations run their own presences within the event: HIMSS, for instance, appears as a knowledge partner on the health track rather than as a separate co-located event. Searched: the official site, the programme pages and the partner pages. Source: adoptai.artefact.com, consulted 18 September 2026.
For the 2026 edition, a regular access pass is listed at EUR 600, with an early bird rate of EUR 420. Note that the event record carries a different pair, EUR 900 standard and EUR 599 early bird against the EUR 600 and EUR 420 above, which appears to be the tariff of an earlier edition or a different tier; the EUR 600 and EUR 420 figures are the ones indexed for 2026 and the discrepancy has not been resolved on this pass (unverifiable information), so a buyer should confirm on the booking page before committing. Four registration routes sit alongside the paid pass and are worth knowing because three of them are free: students register as event volunteers through a dedicated pre-registration page; speakers do not register at all, the organiser contacts them to arrange participation and badges; partners and exhibitors holding a discount code register free through the ticketing office; and press and media accredit separately. Booking runs through adoptai.artefact.com/content/inscription. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/regular-access and adoptai.artefact.com/content/inscription, consulted 18 September 2026.
There is no open call for papers: the record shows the call-for-papers status as closed, and no submission form, deadline or selection criteria were found for the 2026 edition. The speaker page states only that speakers do not register themselves and that the Adopt AI team contacts them to plan their participation and issue badges, which confirms a curated roster. Given that more than 50 of the 2025 speakers were sitting chief executives and that the organiser is a consultancy with its own client base, the realistic route onto a stage is a relationship with Artefact or with a track partner rather than an application. The Startup Stage is the one format where a smaller company has a documented path, though its selection process is not published either. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/speakers-registration and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Sponsorship and exhibiting are handled through adoptai.artefact.com/content/become-a-sponsor, with a separate registration page for partners and exhibitors who already hold a discount code. No public tier ladder, tier pricing or inclusion list was found for the 2026 edition, so the sponsorship proposition is quoted rather than published: a prospective sponsor deals with the organiser directly. The scale to negotiate against is around 250 exhibitors at the 2025 edition. Exhibitor and partner staff register free with a code, so the stand or partnership fee is the whole cost rather than a fee plus passes. Searched: the sponsor page, the partner and exhibitor registration page and the event's media resources. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/become-a-sponsor and adoptai.artefact.com/content/partners-exhibitors-registration, consulted 18 September 2026.
The named commercial partners on record are NTT DATA, AWS, Databricks and Probabl, with HIMSS listed as a knowledge partner on the health side rather than as a commercial sponsor. Around 250 exhibitors took part in the 2025 edition, and the same order of magnitude is expected for 2026. That named list is short for an event of this size and is not presented as exhaustive: no full partner page by tier was retrievable on this pass, so the four names above should be read as confirmed sponsors rather than as the complete 2026 roster. The event's media partners are a separate and much longer list, covered in the press entries below. Source: the database sponsor record cross-checked against adoptai.artefact.com, consulted 18 September 2026.
Large European corporates dominate, and the 2025 CEO roster shows which kind. Reading the named chief executives by sector: industrials and aerospace (Airbus, Schneider Electric, Legrand, Valeo), energy and utilities (TotalEnergies, Veolia, Aramco), retail and food services (Carrefour, Sodexo), banking and insurance (Natixis, Crédit Agricole, AXA, Ageas, CNP), telecoms (Orange, SFR), pharmaceuticals (Sanofi, Servier), logistics (Geodis, DHL) and the public and sovereign sector (Caisse des Dépôts, and Gulf state entities through Aramco and Abu Dhabi's technology bodies). Against that CAC 40 weight sit the technology vendors, Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Databricks, Dataiku, Celonis, Aleph Alpha, NTT DATA, and a startup contingent served by its own stage. What is thin, by design, is the research and developer population: this is a buyer-and-deployer audience, not a technical one. Source: the 2025 speaker roster on adoptai.artefact.com and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Journalists accredit through the dedicated press and media page at adoptai.artefact.com/content/press-media, which is the route the organiser names for media participation; a separate media resources page at adoptai.artefact.com/content/media-resources holds press material. Eligibility criteria, required proof of journalistic activity, accreditation deadlines and on-site press facilities were not published in the sources reachable on this pass, and no named press contact was found, so a journalist should expect to deal with the organiser's communications team, led by events and communications director Philippine Levey, rather than work from published rules. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/press-media, consulted 18 September 2026.
The most important fact about coverage of this event is how much of it is contracted. Twenty-four outlets hold official media partner status: Le Monde (media partner), Financial Times (media partner), Reuters (media partner), Bloomberg (media partner), BBC (media partner), CNBC (media partner), AFP (media partner), Forbes (media partner), Handelsblatt (media partner), Le Figaro (media partner), Les Echos (media partner), Le Parisien (media partner), BFM TV (media partner), TF1 (media partner), France TV (media partner), La Tribune (media partner), ZDNET (media partner), L'Usine Nouvelle (media partner), L'Usine Digitale (media partner), ActuIA (media partner), JDN (media partner), Challenges (media partner), BFM Business (media partner) and Maddyness (media partner). Alongside that, the organiser publishes its own output, notably a CEO Stage report for the 2025 edition and video of the stages on its YouTube channel. Independent third-party coverage located on this pass includes the Grand Palais's own event listing and vendor event pages from NTT DATA and HIMSS, which are partner communications rather than journalism. The "Davos of AI" label attributed to the press is repeated by the organiser without a specific outlet being cited. Source: the database media partner record cross-checked against adoptai.artefact.com, consulted 18 September 2026.
Weak as an independent signal, for a reason that is unusually easy to demonstrate. Essentially every French outlet that would plausibly cover a Paris AI summit, Le Monde (media partner), Le Figaro (media partner), Les Echos (media partner), La Tribune (media partner), Le Parisien (media partner), Challenges (media partner), BFM TV (media partner), BFM Business (media partner), TF1 (media partner), France TV (media partner), AFP (media partner), plus the specialist titles L'Usine Nouvelle (media partner), L'Usine Digitale (media partner), JDN (media partner), ActuIA (media partner) and Maddyness (media partner), is a contracted media partner of the event, as are the international names Financial Times (media partner), Reuters (media partner), Bloomberg (media partner), BBC (media partner), CNBC (media partner), Forbes (media partner), Handelsblatt (media partner) and ZDNET (media partner). Counting coverage volume here measures the partnership programme, not outside attention. The attendance figures show the consequence: the 2025 edition is reported at 20,000 participants in some places and more than 25,000 in others, with 500 speakers in one account and 600 in another, and no independent count exists to settle it. Treat the scale as large and the precision as unestablished. Source: cross-reading of the media partner list against the published 2025 figures, 18 September 2026.
Engineers and researchers. The programme is organised around what executives decide, not around how systems are built: there is no paper track, no deep technical programme and no research presence, and a machine learning practitioner will get more from a developer conference at a tenth of the price. Anyone still deciding whether to use AI at all is also in the wrong room, since the event's premise is adoption already underway. Price filters a third group: at EUR 600 regular access, plus Paris in December, a small company without a partner code or a startup stage slot will find the cost hard to justify against the free alternatives in the same city. And a speaker hoping to be selected on merit should note that there is no open call at all. Source: adoptai.artefact.com, consulted 18 September 2026.
It closes the European AI year. Sitting on 3 and 4 December, Adopt AI is the last major AI fixture in EMEA before the calendar resets, after the autumn cluster of World Summit AI in Amsterdam in October, the AI Summit in London in November and the Barcelona events in September. Its distinguishing feature against those is the sector structure: where most AI conferences organise by technology or by role, Adopt AI organises by industry, which makes it the one event where a health AI buyer and a defence AI buyer are in the same building on purpose. Within Paris it is the second largest technology event of the year after VivaTech, and it explicitly positions itself as the business sequel to the AI Action Summit that France hosted in February 2025. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and the EventsIndex AI registry, consulted 18 September 2026.
No. Adopt AI is held only at the Grand Palais in Paris, and the record shows editions in 2024, 2025 and the forthcoming 2026 one, all at the same venue. There is no travelling edition, no regional franchise and no second city. The one caveat concerns the event's own history rather than its geography: the record dates the first edition to 2024, while several accounts describe the November 2025 edition as the first, which most likely reflects the first edition held at the Grand Palais rather than the first edition outright (unverifiable information). Artefact runs other events, but none under this brand. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and the database edition history, consulted 18 September 2026.
English. The event record gives English as the sole working language, and the programme, the site and the speaker material are published in English despite the Paris venue and the largely French corporate roster. No commitment to French-language sessions or to simultaneous interpretation is documented. A French-speaking attendee should expect an English-language programme; a non-French speaker should not expect to be excluded. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Partly. The event record confirms replay access is offered, so sessions can be watched after the fact, and the organiser publishes stage video on its YouTube channel at youtube.com/@AdoptAI-GrandPalais, including CEO Stage recordings from the 2025 edition. What is not documented is a live remote pass: no virtual ticket, livestream access or online-only registration option was found for the 2026 edition, so remote participation means watching afterwards rather than attending at a distance. The organiser also publishes written output, notably the 2025 CEO Stage report. Source: adoptai.artefact.com and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Not publicly disclosed. No refund terms, cancellation window, transfer or name-change procedure was found on the booking page or in the sources reachable on this pass. Two structural points are worth knowing in place of a policy: the early bird rate creates a real incentive to commit months ahead, which is precisely when a cancellation policy matters most, and several registration categories, students, partners and exhibitors with a code, and accredited press, are free, so the refund question only arises for paid regular access. A buyer committing at the early bird rate should ask for the terms in writing before paying. Searched: the booking page, the regular access page and the registration pages. Source: adoptai.artefact.com/content/inscription, consulted 18 September 2026.
No event-specific accessibility statement was found for Adopt AI. What is documented belongs to the venue: the Grand Palais provides dedicated accesses for visitors with reduced mobility, entrance B on Avenue du Général Eisenhower for the Galeries Nationales spaces and the Avenue Winston Churchill entrance for events in the Nave, which is the space a summit of this size would use. Whether Adopt AI applies those arrangements, provides companion tickets, reserved seating at the stages, hearing assistance or an accessibility contact is not documented, and no access contact is published. An attendee with access requirements should contact the organiser directly rather than rely on the venue's general provision. Searched: the official event site and the Grand Palais visitor pages. Source: grandpalais.fr/en/faq and adoptai.artefact.com, consulted 18 September 2026.
The Grand Palais is on Avenue Winston Churchill in the 8th arrondissement, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine. By metro, take line 1 or line 13 to Champs-Élysées Clemenceau, which sits at the building's door, or line 9 to Franklin D. Roosevelt. By RER, line C stops at Invalides, a short walk across the Pont Alexandre III. Buses 28, 42, 52, 72, 73, 80, 83 and 93 serve the area, and Vélib' stations sit nearby. From Charles de Gaulle airport the usual route is RER B to Châtelet then line 1 westbound; from Orly, the metro line 14 extension to Châtelet then line 1. Driving is a poor option: this is central Paris with no event parking, and December traffic on the Champs-Élysées is at its worst. Source: grandpalais.fr and cometoparis.com venue guidance, consulted 18 September 2026.
Most AI conferences sort their programme by capability: a track for generative models, one for agents, one for infrastructure. Adopt AI sorts by sector, eight of them, and that choice is the whole proposition. An insurer's problem with a large language model is not the model, it is the regulator, the claims process and the twelve legacy systems the answer has to pass through, and none of that is shared with a football club or a defence ministry. Putting AI for Health, AI for Finance, AI for Defence and AI for Industry in separate rooms accepts that the interesting part of adoption is domain-specific rather than technical. It also explains the speaker list: more than 50 sitting chief executives took the stage in 2025, which is a roster you can only assemble if the promise is a peer conversation about deployment rather than a demonstration of capability. The cost of the choice is equally clear, and it is the reason the who-should-skip entry above is short and blunt: an event organised this way has nothing to offer the person building the model.
Twenty-four media partners is the number that explains all the others. Le Monde (media partner), Les Echos (media partner), Le Figaro (media partner), AFP (media partner), BFM TV (media partner), TF1 (media partner), France TV (media partner), the Financial Times (media partner), Reuters (media partner) and Bloomberg (media partner) are all contracted partners of this event, which means that the volume of coverage it receives measures its partnership programme rather than independent interest, and that there is effectively no outlet positioned to audit its claims. The consequence shows up immediately in the figures: the 2025 edition circulates as both 20,000 and more than 25,000 participants, and as both 500 and 600 speakers, with no way to settle either. The 25,000 attached to 2026 is a forecast made by the organiser about its own event. The parts of the record that are checkable are the ones with names on them: more than 50 chief executives on the 2025 CEO Stage, itemised in the programme entry above, and a published list of who they were. Judge the event on that roster, which can be verified person by person, rather than on a headline count that nobody independent has ever measured.
Official site: adoptai.artefact.com. Programme: adoptai.artefact.com/content/programme-global and adoptai.artefact.com/content/programme-global-stages-. Booking: adoptai.artefact.com/content/inscription. Regular access pass: adoptai.artefact.com/content/regular-access. Student pre-registration: adoptai.artefact.com/content/student-pre-registration. Speakers: adoptai.artefact.com/content/speakers-registration. Partners and exhibitors: adoptai.artefact.com/content/partners-exhibitors-registration. Sponsorship: adoptai.artefact.com/content/become-a-sponsor. Press and media: adoptai.artefact.com/content/press-media. Media resources: adoptai.artefact.com/content/media-resources. Organiser: artefact.com/events/adopt-ai-grand-palais-paris/. Venue: grandpalais.fr. Social: linkedin.com/company/adopt-ai-grand-palais, youtube.com/@AdoptAI-GrandPalais, @Artefact_Global on X, instagram.com/artefact_global/, hashtag #AdoptAI. Event enquiries: contact@startupinside.com.