[Interview] cortAIx: a “team France” for defence AI

Which issues does cortAIx address?

Mickael Brossard: Thales has been committed to artificial intelligence for more than ten years now and has already integrated this technology into around a hundred of its products through continuous investment in research and development (R&D). Launched in 2024, the cortAIx initiative, Thales’s artificial intelligence accelerator for critical systems, addresses a new phase of technological acceleration marked by the rise of generative AI and the need expressed by our customers for ever-increasing capacities thanks to this technology, in particular with the creation of a structure like the Ministerial Agency for Artificial Intelligence in Defence (AMIAD), which was created around the same time. Faced with this rapid evolution, it had become essential to unite the AI expertise and capabilities present in the different entities of the group in order to accelerate its industrialisation and integration into critical solutions. In a particularly unstable geopolitical context, moreover, the emergence of disruptive technologies and the evolution of the threat have placed the issues of defence and technological sovereignty at the forefront, making cooperation between manufacturers essential. At the end of 2025, we entered into a strategic partnership with Dassault Aviation, then with Naval Group in early 2026. The ambition of cortAIx is to contribute to the creation of a real “team France” in AI for critical systems, able to meet the operational challenges of tomorrow and to be ready for this turning point in history.

How does the collaboration with the Naval Group teams within cortAIx in France work in practice?

Mickael Brossard: From March to July 2026, some fifteen Naval Group employees gradually joined the cortAIx teams. Initially, they divided their work between the Naval Group site of Ollioules and the Thales premises in Île-de-France. Since the beginning of July, they have been working full-time in Ollioules, in Naval Group’s new buildings hosting the Digital Centre of Excellence. Comprising system architects, user experience (UX) engineers and product owners among others, the Naval Group team provides in-depth knowledge of the naval environment and systems and operational needs. Thales’s AI experts, for their part – data scientists, machine learning operations (MLOps) engineers and DevOps – steer the engineering using proven methods and tools. This complementarity of expertise makes it possible to quickly increase the maturity of solutions integrating trusted AI applied to Naval Group systems, with a clear objective: to strengthen the French Navy’s operational superiority.

What work is being done today and what are the prospects for the future?

Mickael Brossard: The work focuses on what we call system AI, i.e. solutions capable of analysing large volumes of data from multiple sources in order to generate predictions, recommendations and help operators make decisions. Several use cases identified by Naval Group are already being studied. Among them are collaborative combat, allowing systems on board different carriers to interact and conduct coordinated operations within the carrier group, or autonomy on missions, especially for swarms of drones. The teams are also working on logistics and maintenance support services, as well as integrated tactical situation modules for command and control centres. Close-range combat is another area of application on which we are about to start work.

What is your way of working?

Mickael Brossard: We rely on a proven methodology and these first few months have enabled the Naval Group teams to familiarise themselves with our processes. The first step is to ensure that the operational need is clearly identified and that AI will provide real added value. Workshops make it possible to cover all aspects of the subject and to define the characteristics of the expected deliverable more precisely. We work in an agile way, with three-week sprints. Depending on the objectives – exploration, demonstrator or industrialised solution – a use case can be developed between three to nine months. The cortAIx philosophy is to be open, agile and fast. Our ambition is to provide the best possible response to our customers by capitalising on the technological bricks already developed by Thales and on collaboration with external partners such as Mistral AI, AMIAD and French start-ups. By combining our expertise and that of Naval Group, we have everything we need to build together solutions integrating the latest technological advances for the benefit of the French Navy and French sovereignty.