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“In a world where Al Qaeda can buy Chinese drones in a snap, the usual 10-year innovation cycle in the military just doesn’t work anymore,” says Thales’ Devèze.
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It also used gesture recognition software by Clay AIR, a Paris-based startup with research labs near Bordeaux and offices in California, which is also marketing its hand-tracking technology for use in cars and gaming virtual-reality headsets. The company teamed up with Simsoft Industry, a French upstart based near Toulouse which makes voice assistants, usually for industrial applications. “In a world where Al Qaeda can buy Chinese drones in a snap, the usual 10-year innovation cycle in the military just doesn’t work anymore.” It will be ready to sell within the next two years, and was built by combining Thales know-how with technology from startups that wasn’t necessarily geared towards the military to begin with. One example the company demoed recently at its InnovDays event is an augmented-reality helmet for soldiers, with an integrated voice-assistant and navigation system that also shows the positions of fellow soldiers. The company has about 1,000 startup partners in portfolio and 20 collaborative proof-of-concept products in the works. Some 1,200 startups each year reach out in more or less formal chats about working together. “We link the interesting startups quickly with the right people in and around Thales.” “We put ourselves in the entrepreneurs’ shoes, so we cut back on meetings, do more videoconferencing and take on the heavy, costly tasks like all the legal stuff,” Montagard says. It has made some adjustments along the way. Thales has been pushing for the past five years or so to collaborate more with up-and-coming startups, despite what is sometimes a massive culture shock for the company, better known for its secrecy and engineers in grey suits than for meetings around foosball tables. In return, the corporate giant gets speedier innovation. That’s business-to-business turning into business-to-government, which means ticking the boxes for required legal, technical and military clearances. “We take B2B startups and make them B2G compatible,” says Thierry Devèze, innovation leader at Thales. “We take B2B startups and make them B2G compatible.”
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If startups think selling to big companies is hard, it is nothing compared to selling to government. It has the budget and size to guarantee what practically no startup can: a policy for near-zero margin of error, even for brand new technology. Thales’ history as a European defence behemoth, as well as cybersecurity expertise reinforced by its recent acquisition of Gemalto, means the company has the ability to cater to the military’s specific needs. They face unfamiliar rules and codes, different from their day-to-day of doing business in the commercial world. Thales’ Frédéric Montagardīut the complexities of military tenders and the kinds of clearances required to supply the army tend to make defence contracts inaccessible for startups going at it alone in Europe. Military spending amounted to some $245 bn in Western Europe alone in 2018, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The aerospace and defence market is expected to grow in 2020, including by countries in the NATO military alliance, according to a Deloitte report last year. “We become partners because they have a technology ready, and we can tweak it with our own expertise and take it to our customers faster and cheaper than if we did everything in-house.” Do you have a market for it?’,” says Frédéric Montagard, who is in charge of technology intelligence, assessment and insertion at Thales, effectively heading up its startup coordination. “The typical approach we get from startups is: ‘Here’s my technology.