OpenAI’s arrival in Paris marks a major milestone for the Paris Region tech ecosystem. As artificial intelligence transforms the way we work, learn, heal, and create, the Paris Region is establishing itself as a strategic hub for companies driving this global shift.

A recognized pioneer in the field, OpenAI — creator of ChatGPT, used by over 500 million users weekly — has selected Paris as the location of its first continental European office. This strategic move highlights the region’s exceptional pool of AI talent, dynamic innovation landscape, and France’s strong commitment to ethical, inclusive, and responsible AI development.

In this exclusive interview, we spoke with Julie Lavet, Head of EU Member States Relations and Partnerships and OpenAI’s France Site Lead, to understand the company’s motivations for expanding in Paris Region. She shares use cases with Sanofi, Orange, and the Château de Versailles, and outlines OpenAI’s vision for AI that serves the common good and reflects European values.

To begin, could you briefly introduce OpenAI and your role within the organization?

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all individuals.

I am the Head of Partnerships and Institutional Relations for OpenAI in Europe. My role is to facilitate dialogue with institutional stakeholders so that they can benefit from these technologies.

Many people associate OpenAI primarily with ChatGPT. Could you walk us through the range of products and technologies OpenAI offers?

OpenAI offers a much broader range of products and technologies that support individuals, developers, and organizations across use cases.

ChatGPT is a personal AI assistant used by 500 million weekly active users for tasks like writing, coding, learning, and planning. The ChatGPT Team & Enterprise versions offer secure, admin-managed versions of ChatGPT for businesses and teams. There are now two million paying business ChatGPT users globally.

Then, the OpenAI API is used by developers and businesses to integrate our models into their own apps, websites, and tools: everything from customer support chatbots to productivity tools and creative apps. Over 3 million developers from 200+ countries are already using OpenAI’s API.

We also offer an Agents platform for building AI agents. AI agents are the next step in making the benefits of AI accessible to everyone.

In terms of the models we’re building, over the past year, our advancements in reasoning, multimodality and safety have opened the door for AI to become more capable and autonomous. These breakthroughs enable our systems to go beyond answering questions: they can now take on complex, multi-step workflows on behalf of users, helping them achieve more.

What is OpenAI’s core mission, and how does it guide your work globally and locally?

At the heart of our mission at OpenAI is a simple belief: AI should and can benefit everyone. Our commitment is to help people, businesses, societies and economies realise the benefits of OpenAI and accelerate economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.

We believe that AI can help people, businesses, and society be more creative, efficient, and productive. It can advance scientific progress and solve our biggest problems and support economic growth everywhere.

AI is already starting to deliver real value to many industries, particularly in France in Education, Health, Culture… and new industries that have yet to be imagined. Great companies built using AI are going to be founded in the next couple of years. It’s very likely that we’ll see them emerge from France (and the Paris area!)

How are OpenAI’s technologies currently being used by businesses and individuals, and how do you balance fundamental research, product development, and strategic partnerships within your organization?

Individuals are using our products across a variety of use cases. From everyday productivity and learning (as a personal assistant for writing, summarizing, brainstorming, language learning, and tutoring); creativity and exploration (generating story ideas and travel plans to exploring code and math problems) to accessibility and inclusion (the voice and vision capabilities (like describing images or conversing in real time) are being used by individuals to access information and navigate the world more easily.

For businesses, our API and enterprise offerings enable secure, scalable integration into their operations, with use cases ranging from customer service automation to knowledge management, internal copilots and development of AI-powered products. Our APIs enable them to create entire apps and features, from code assistants to creative tools and educational platforms. We develop advanced AI technologies that are now widely used in France across sectors, such as healthcare (e.g. Sanofi), and services (e.g. Orange).

But AI isn't just transforming businesses; it’s improving lives and tackling society’s biggest issues. Take how the ESCP Business School is bridging the gap between education and emerging tech. They use our ChatGPT Edu offer for teaching, while in research, it aids in tasks like literature reviews and data analysis. Faculty and staff use it to enhance the student experience and allocate more time for higher-level strategic tasks. By integrating cutting-edge AI tools, ESCP is set to revolutionize its educational approach, enhancing learning experiences and preparing students for the future of work.

Internally, OpenAI is structured to maintain a tight loop between cutting-edge research, safe and useful product development, and high-impact partnerships. First, fundamental research remains core to OpenAI's mission. Many breakthrough capabilities stem from long-term, frontier research efforts. Then the Applied AI teams work to turn research into usable products. The Safety and Alignment team then ensures our models are deployed responsibly, working on model evaluations, red teaming, societal impacts, and building open-source tools (like the system card for GPT-4o). Finally, we develop strategic collaborations to help us deploy AI in impactful ways while gathering real-world feedback to guide future development.

Balancing these areas is critical. Research fuels capabilities, product turns those capabilities into value, and partnerships help us stress-test and scale responsibly.

What motivated OpenAI to choose Paris Region for its first continental European office, and how does this move support your broader strategy for growth in Europe?

France is globally recognized for its leadership in innovation, technology, and artificial intelligence. In 2024 alone, French AI startups raised €1.9 billion — representing 27% of all national venture capital investments. This positions France just behind the United States (28%) and ahead of the United Kingdom (25%) and China (17%) in AI-focused VC funding, highlighting the country’s central role in the global AI ecosystem.

France is also one of the top five countries using ChatGPT outside the United States, with the number of weekly active users having tripled over the past year.

Choosing the Paris Region for our first continental European office was therefore a natural decision. It allows OpenAI to deepen its collaboration with local developers, businesses, and civil society.

France has cultivated one of the most sophisticated AI ecosystems in the world, rooted in academic excellence, engineering rigor, and a deep cultural emphasis on ethics and philosophy. We're hiring across a wide range of roles, primarily looking at recruiting world-class engineers. We’re particularly interested in profiles that combine technical depth with interdisciplinary thinking.

How does this Paris Region office fit into your global expansion plans, and what are your short- and medium-term objectives for its development?

In the short term, our focus is on recruiting top-tier talent, mostly in engineering, while deepening our collaborations with local institutions. We’re building a team that is both globally connected and deeply integrated into the European ecosystem.

Over the medium term, we aim to make Paris a center of excellence for advancing safe and broadly beneficial AI in close alignment with European values. That includes contributing to regulatory dialogue, supporting local innovation, and ensuring that our models are developed and deployed with cultural sensitivity and public benefit in mind.

Paris is a strategic anchor for how we engage with Europe and the world.

Can you share concrete examples of how companies in Paris Region, like Sanofi or Orange, are using OpenAI’s solutions, and what measurable outcomes they’ve achieved?

We’re proud to support major companies located in the Paris Region.

Sanofi, Formation Bio and OpenAI are collaborating to build AI-powered software to accelerate drug development and bring new medicines to patients more efficiently. The first outcome from this collaboration is Muse - a groundbreaking tool - which aims to shorten patient recruitment timelines from months to minutes. Patient recruitment in clinical trials is a time-consuming and costly process. Fewer than 10% of eligible patients participate, often due to a lack of awareness or targeted outreach, leading to delays in clinical trial timelines and access to potentially life-saving therapies.

Muse uses AI to analyze scientific literature, real-world data, and unique insights to speed up recruitment strategies and material creation, making clinical trial outreach faster, more targeted, and inclusive.

Orange has developed an internal GenAI secure toolkit based on OpenAI models, allowing employees to explore generative AI in a secure and accessible way. This solution enhances efficiency for tasks like document summarization, software analysis, and image creation. This solution has transformed the daily work of Orange, enabling access to state-of-the-art AI solutions while ensuring the security of sensitive company data. This solution has also reduced the time spent on many administrative tasks and enabled the productivity of their employees, especially in areas such as software programming.

These early results underscore the transformative potential of AI when it is thoughtfully integrated into core business processes, with the right guardrails, governance, and respect for European standards.

What role do partnerships with public institutions in Paris Region, such as ministries, museums, or universities, play in your strategy? How do you envision these collaborations evolving? (for instance, your partnership with the Versailles Palace)

Partnerships with public institutions in the Paris Region are central to our mission and long-term strategy. They allow us to ground advanced AI in real-world contexts that matter: education, culture, heritage, and civic engagement.

A perfect illustration is our partnership with the Palace of Versailles and the French startup Ask Mona. Visitors to the Jardins of the Versailles Palace can now dialogue in real time with the fountains and emblematic statues of the Versailles gardens, thus giving them a voice to tell their story in an interactive and captivating way. This experience is made possible thanks to our Realtime API technology, which allows instant and natural vocal interactions. It’s not just about showcasing what AI can do, it’s about enabling legacy institutions to embrace technology to better democratize access to culture and enhance our understanding of history.

Separately, as part of our NextGenAI initiative, we’ve launched a partnership with Sciences Po, one of France’s leading institutions for political science and social research. This non-commercial collaboration enables Sciences Po researchers to use our most advanced model, o1, to explore societal issues such as inequality, demographics, and democratic participation. It is one of the first integrations of frontier AI into public research in human and social sciences in France.

Simplon is another good example; this organization provides digital skills training and AI literacy programs to under-resourced communities and is focused on leveraging the power of AI technologies to build positive social impact for society. Simplon was the first European partner to join the OpenAI Academy program dedicated to democratizing access to AI technologies. The goal is to make ChatGPT widely accessible to Simplon’s team, trainees, and beneficiaries and to scale the benefits of state-of-the-art multilingual and multimodal models among other nonprofits.

Finally, would you recommend that other AI companies consider establishing themselves in Paris Region, and if so, what makes it an attractive destination?

Absolutely. The Paris Region offers a unique combination of world-class talent, a dynamic research ecosystem, and strong institutional support for innovation.

From our perspective at OpenAI, establishing a presence here is not just a strategic decision, it’s an opportunity to actively contribute to Europe’s vision for responsible and inclusive AI. France is home to some of the best engineers, scientists, and creative thinkers in the world. The region also fosters close collaboration between academia, startups, and global tech leaders, which creates fertile ground for breakthroughs.

Do you have a favorite place or address in Paris Region? What makes it special for you? And do you go there regularly?

One of my favorite places in the Paris Region is la Gaîté Lyrique. It’s not just a cultural venue, it’s a vibrant space at the intersection of art, technology, and society. Whether it's immersive exhibitions exploring the future of AI and creativity, digital art installations, or experimental performances that merge code, music, and emotion, it’s a place where innovation meets imagination.

We were also proud to collaborate with la Gaîté Lyrique on our very first OpenAI event in Paris back in May 2024. It was the perfect setting to convene artists, researchers, developers, and policymakers and spark conversations about the future of AI in society.

I particularly appreciate how this space fosters public dialogue around emerging technologies through accessible, creative formats. It’s a wonderful reminder that AI isn’t just about compute and infrastructure, it’s also about culture, emotion, and how we imagine the future together. It’s where I’ve had some of the most thought-provoking experiences about what it means to build AI that truly benefits everyone.

I love to go there, whether to attend events, concerts, or simply recharge around a good brunch with friends and family.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email.