Atos and Inria join forces for five years around AI, robotics and cybersecurity
Announced on November 10, 2026, the agreement is intended to accelerate the transfer of work from the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology to industrial applications described as “sovereign”, aimed at French and European organisations.
Atos projects backed by Inria's project teams
The partnership brings together Atos, the digital services brand of Atos Group, and Inria. It is designed to enable Atos teams to develop the scientific foundations of their innovation projects, drawing on the expertise of the institute's project teams.
The two organisations intend in particular to collaborate on physical AI (capable of perceiving the real world and acting physically on its environment), agentic AI, robotics, cybersecurity and digital twins. For its part, Inria sees in this an opportunity to strengthen the impact of its research through contact with industrial use cases.
Five-year renewable term and several collaboration tools
The agreement has been concluded for a renewable term of five years. It provides for integrated joint project teams between Atos and Inria, the launch of Inria Challenges built with Atos, research contracts, industrial chairs and the supervision of doctoral theses.
The two partners are also considering joint responses to European calls for projects, as well as participation in research consortia. These various instruments are expected to carry the first selected lines of work.
These cover in particular the orchestration of multi-agent systems, the explainability and reliability of AI, specialised small language models (SLMs), neuro-symbolic AI and dynamic knowledge graphs, as well as interfaces between humans, robotics and AI, in particular through voice.
Robotics: a seat on the scientific committee and the Maestro consortium
Justin Carpentier, head of WILLOW, the joint project team specialised in robotics, is set to join Atos's scientific committee in France. Atos also plans to join Maestro, the robotics research consortium created in July 2026 by Inria and the CNRS.
This consortium aims to equip robots with decision-making autonomy in complex, unstructured and open environments, through an open source software suite. “Industry needs innovations based on solid scientific foundations,” said Laurent Clergue, Director of Innovation at Atos France.
For Bruno Sportisse, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Inria, the agreement illustrates “the strategic choice made by Inria since 2018 to develop bilateral, public-private partnerships with French companies”.
