The chairman of CMA CGM, Rodolphe Saadé, has announced that the company is investing in ventures beyond its core container shipping business following record-breaking annual profits last year. This includes building a media division and air cargo business, as well as exploring artificial intelligence.

In particular, Saadé has unveiled Kyutai, an AI open science lab founded jointly with Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel’s iliad Group. The non-profit laboratory aims to advance research in AI and tackle the main challenges of modern AI by developing large multimodal models and inventing new algorithms to enhance their capacities, reliability, and efficiency. Kyutai will use the computing power made available by Scaleway, part of Niel’s tech empire, which provides the highest-performance computing power for AI applications in Europe.

Kyutai has received nearly EUR300m in investments to date and is committed to democratizing AI by sharing its advances with the entire AI ecosystem. This includes scientists, developers, companies and decision-makers in democracies. Saadé expressed his desire for the younger generation to benefit from the opportunities of AI through Kyutai by ensuring researchers have the resources they need to create and invent the world of tomorrow.

The CMA CGM Group’s involvement in AI research is driven by a desire to position France and the rest of Europe at the forefront of artificial intelligence research. By creating a dynamic and innovative ecosystem that keeps businesses competitive, Saadé emphasized that joining forces is the best way to prepare for the future in this realm.