Foreword

FOR CEA-LIST, 2025 was a year of exemplary consolidation and forward-looking strategic thinking. With the rise of generative AI and the emergence of physical AI and quantum computing, the pace of technological change has never been faster. In this rapidly-evolving context, our mission of identifying and nurturing breakthroughs in service to responsible innovation has never been timelier.
HCERES, France’s higher education and research evaluator, confirmed the excellence of our research in a report that provided a detailed and meaningful analysis of our activities, underscoring our unique position as a bridge between early-stage research and deployable technologies that support our nation’s industrial competitiveness. This overwhelmingly positive appraisal positions our research, which includes flourishing contract R&D, among the best in the world. It is on this strong foundation that we have initiated a profound transformation of our programs.

Phase II of our Reveal strategy is at the center of this transformation. Digital continuity, a key enabler of the digital transformation of industry in France and across Europe, is one of the pillars of this ambitious strategy In January 2026 we launched four major technology programs addressing world models for intelligent robotics, the orchestration of distributed agentic AI, a platform for distributed LLM specialization learning, and multimodal control instrumentation. The goal is to leverage scientific breakthroughs published in A-rank journals and our portfolio of 1850 patents to speed up the development of our technologies and their deployment in real-world industrial use cases.

And these are not the only programs that will support the success of our strategy to speed up the transfer of new technologies to industry. In France, we have deepened our engagement with the CEA (ASIC) and Inria (Numérique) National Program Agencies, a move that allowed us to initiate new programs on high-performance computing components for AI (PEPR CAMELIA), component design (PHOENIX), and Digital Twins (EDT). We have also bolstered our commitment to research at the EU level, driving the European vision on robotics and AI and launching the EuroCDP European design platform, whose projects in France will be supported by the CEA List-led IC-DASH Design Enablement Team.

All our research is conducted with the clear objective of supporting industrial stakeholders through innovation. Among this rich palette of activities, List Tech Days 2025 stood out, bringing in more than 500 decision-makers from industry to discover the latest advances coming out of our labs. This impressive turnout provides further evidence of our central role in the French and European research ecosystems and is a testament to our ability to transform research into tangible innovations for industry.

Our dedication to these programs will shape how we address the challenges ahead in 2026. We have already responded to the changes to the Carnot program and its massive expansion to include, among other initiatives, the French University Innovation Clusters. While the Carnot framework may be changing, its fundamental mission—to stimulate the economy through technological innovation—remains the same. In 2026, Carnot will have to reinvent itself in a more agile, responsive form better able to meet the challenges of our times, from the transition to a green economy to digital sovereignty.
Finally, 2026 will be an opportunity to develop our industrial R&D partnerships through new affiliate programs like DEFI Lab and through expanded use of our technology platforms to support projects with our partners.

Our 2025 Scientific Report attests to the depth and breadth of our research and highlights the most salient results of projects at the cutting edge of innovation. Inside you will find significant advances—spanning all areas of digital technology—that demonstrate our ability to transform early-stage research into concrete innovations that support industrial competitiveness.