Deadline Date: March 23, 2026
The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region is launching a bold initiative to help very small businesses leverage AI for practical performance and growth.
This challenge focuses on ethical, frugal, and sovereign AI solutions that unlock data, automate tasks, and scale innovation for crafts, tourism, and service sectors. The objectives are to connect very small businesses with experts, provide training and funding, boost competitiveness, create jobs, and foster local impact, making the South a hub for everyday, useful AI.
Through the Sud Productiv’Al Startup Challenge, small retailers and artisans are invited to adopt AI to optimize inventory, personalize customer relationships, and improve daily operations. Many of these businesses have been hesitant to implement AI due to limited digital skills, perceived high costs, fragmented data, and fear of complexity or loss of control. The challenge aims to show that AI can be an accessible, practical, and transformative tool for small-scale operations.
Participating startups should offer services and solutions that help small and medium businesses improve customer relations, marketing, supplier interactions, and other operational areas without requiring a specific technological approach. The solutions will be evaluated based on proven business impact with clear KPIs, ease of adoption through no/low-code setups and user-friendly training, strict adherence to GDPR and AI ethics, affordability with transparent pricing, and scalability across different business sizes with seamless integration to POS, CRM, or e-commerce systems.
Eligible startups are those incorporated within the last eight years and employing fewer than 100 people, aiming to provide measurable improvements to the residential economy through AI solutions. By participating, startups have the opportunity to test, learn, and deploy responsible AI that delivers tangible results for very small businesses across the region.
For more information, visit VivaTech.
