Editor’s note: We’ll keep this page up-to-date with videos, notes, thoughts, and photos from the event.

Update 3 – Extreme Tech Challenge #XTC2020

What is the best way to encourage tech for good? For a group of technology big hitters, one answer is to create a support system and competition that encourages the use of technology to help create a better world.

At Viva Technology 2019 in Paris, the challenge went out to startups, innovators, and entrepreneurs around the world: Enter the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) and compete for $10 million in total investments and cash awards, plus the chance to make a big impact on solving extreme global problems. XTC will declare winners based on the ability to address one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Taking the stage at #VivaTech to announce their support for XTC were Young Sohn, Corporate President and CSO of Samsung Electronics; Bill Tai, original co-creator of XTC; Gerri Elliott, Executive Vice President at Cisco; Simon Segars, CEO of ARM; and Maurice Levy, founder of VivaTech.

Are you up to the XTC challenge? Find competition details and entry information at the XTC website.

Update 2 – Get inspired to “Power the Future with Purposeful Technology” with Samsung President & CSO Young Sohn’s keynote from VivaTech.

Update 1 – #VivaTech is livestreaming: Watch the conference below and don’t miss the keynote by Samsung Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn on “Powering the Future with Purposeful Technology” at 14:35 CEST.

Original post

The world’s brightest minds, talent, and products are gathering on May 16–18, 2019, in Paris for #VivaTech, the world’s rendezvous for startups and leaders to celebrate innovation.

VivaTech describes its event as “a celebration of today’s innovations and tomorrow’s possibilities for everyone who believes in the power of technology to transform business and society.” The gathering is held in Europe, but its outlook and participants are global.

As a VivaTech sponsor, Samsung will have a strong presence at the event, and there are many ways you can interact with us there.

Attend the keynote by Young Sohn. Samsung Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn will deliver his keynote, “Powering the Future with Purposeful Technology,” on Thursday, May 16, at 14:35 at Stage One. Can’t attend in person? The talk will be streamed live on the Samsung Catalyst Fund website.

Visit the Samsung booth. You’ll find us in booth H21 in the Hall of Tech (Hall 1).

Meet Samsung investment team members. We’ll have representatives from:

  • Samsung Catalyst Fund: Samsung Electronics’ evergreen multi-stage venture capital fund, investing globally in core technologies in new business areas, including AI, automotives/robotics, digital health, and Industry 4.0.
  • Samsung Venture Investment: works with mid- and later-stage companies focused on current Samsung business areas, covering mobile, consumer electronics, and semiconductors.

See demos from Samsung portfolio companies. In our VivaTech booth, we’ll have demos showcasing portfolio companies of both Samsung Catalyst Fund and Samsung Venture Investment. The companies, all of which have European roots and global reach, are:

  • Mapillary is the street-level imagery platform that uses computer vision to scale and automate mapping.
  • AImotive develops a unique toolset for the automotive market to answer all the software challenges of autonomous mobility, powered by advanced artificial intelligence, simulation technology, and supporting hardware architectures.
  • ThinCi pioneered new generation compute architecture enabling developers to innovate new classes of products and bring the benefits of AI to automotive, data center and smart vision markets.
  • Verimi makes the internet safer, more convenient, and fairer by providing a European cross-industry identity, payment, and trusted platform.
  • Oxford Semantic Technologies makes available RDFox, the high performance knowledge graph and semantic reasoning engine. RDFox enables organisations to ask the complex questions of their data at speed and scale.
  • Darktrace is recognized as the world’s leading AI company for cyber defense. With thousands of customers worldwide, the Enterprise Immune System is relied on to detect and fight back against cyber-attacks in real time.
  • Ledger aims to secure the new disruptive class of crypto assets and create secure solutions for blockchain applications, offering Ledger wallets and hardware security modules.
  • Commsignia is helping to build the next-generation autonomous car and smart mobility ecosystem, offering cutting-edge vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication technologies.

Samsung Catalyst Fund is always looking for new VC partners to connect with and new startups to invest in. If you’d like to know where the team is going next and have a chance to be invited to one of our networking receptions, sign up for our newsletter.

We look forward to seeing you at #VivaTech.