By Gus Cheap and Florence Loeve

PARIS (Reuters) – The French Maritime Transport Giant CMA CGM hopes to generate productivity gains thanks to a partnership with the French artificial intelligence start -up (IA) Mistral of 100 million euros revealed on Sunday and presented as an advance for France in a context of global trade tensions.

This five -year partnership will focus in particular on the branch “media” of the conglomerate, which holds the BFM TV television channel or the newspaper La Tribune, as well as on customer service of the group’s logistics and maritime activities.

Mistral employees will work at the CMA CGM headquarters in Marseille.

“I am rather impatient, so I will want to be a king [retour sur investissement] As quickly as possible, “said Rodolphe Saadé, CMMA CGM CEO during a joint interview with the co-founder and president of Mistral Arthur Mensch.

The CMA CMA CGM did not wish to specify the percentage of the referred back on investment or to what deadline he wanted to reach it, but he added that “the implementation of initiatives should not exceed 6 to 12 months”.

According to Rodolphe Saadé, the tools developed by Mistral AI could reduce the response deadlines for customer advisers who deal with a total of approximately one million emails per week, for example to know the optimal route that a ship must take.

In terms of media, the partnership plans to develop tools for verifying sources and information based on artificial intelligence (AI).

After attracting massive funding, the AI ​​sector is under pressure to demonstrate that it can be profitable and that it allows companies adopting AI to generate efficiency gains.

Technological sovereignty

Founded in 2023, Mistral concentrated attention at the Summit for AI organized by the French government in Paris in February.

President Emmanuel Macron erected the French start-up as the European IA champion, competing with American giants like Openai, at the origin of the Chatgpt conversational robot.

Since the start of the year, Mistral, which has CMA CGM among its investors, has announced partnerships with several large French groups including the automaker Stellantis.

Its president Arthur Mensch told Reuters to expect to multiply by 10 his turnover between December 2024 and December 2025.

AI regulations constitutes one of the subjects of discord between the American administration and the European Union, whose relations have further deteriorated after the taxation by President Donald Trump important customs duties.

“Given the troubled situation in which we are, I think it is good that two French groups can announce this partnership,” said Rodolphe Saadé.

CMA CGM was welcomed by US President Donald Trump last month for committing himself to investing $ 20 billion in the United States.

Last July, the group announced a partnership on AI with Google, with an envelope of $ 150 million over five years.

(Report by Florence Lève and Gus Cheapiz, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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